Fabrizio Clerici

Fabrizio Clerici (Milan, May 15, 1913 – Rome, June 7, 1993) was one of the leading figures of postwar Italian surrealism, as well as a painter, set designer, costume designer, architect, and engraver. Born into a bourgeois Milanese family, he moved to Rome in 1920, where he graduated in architecture in 1937. His artistic formation was shaped by his encounter with Alberto Savinio and the Roman intellectual milieu. Clerici began his career as an architect and illustrator, holding his first solo exhibition in Milan in 1943. In the following years, he devoted himself to painting, developing a complex and metaphysical style, characterized by mysterious architectures, ruins, and symbolic elements. He collaborated with Lucio Fontana and was friends with Salvador Dalí, Leonor Fini, and other major artists of the 20th century. His work as a set and costume designer led him to work for theater, ballet, and opera, including the Venice Biennale and Teatro La Fenice. His travels in the Middle East inspired cycles such as Mirages and Temples of the Egg. Works such as Il Minotauro accusa pubblicamente sua madre, Sonno romano, and Le Confessioni palermitane are among his most famous. Exhibited at the MOMA, the Guggenheim in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Vatican Museums, Clerici received national and international recognition.