Sandro Chia

Sandro Chia (b. 1946, Florence, Italy) lives and works in Miami, Rome, and Montalcino. Chia was one of the leading artists during the revival of interest in painting in the 1980s. He established himself as a major artist of the movement in Italian figurative painting known as Transavanguardia, a neo-expressionist movement that sought to re-emphasize color and representation in response to the conceptual art of the time. His work has been exhibited in many important museums and galleries internationally, and was included in nearly every major museum exhibition of the period, including Zeitgeist in 1982. In a career spanning over four decades, exhibition milestones include the Biennale of Paris, Sao Paolo, and three different iterations of the Venice Biennale.

In his expressive paintings, Chia celebrates man's sensuality, vitality, and relationship with nature. Assimilating culture and imagery from the treasure trove of art history, particularly the Italian Renaissance and Futurism, he depicts narratives of eroticism, melancholy, and death, often rich with historical cameos and references. Chia's main protagonists are larger-than-life, heroic male figures imbued with an enigmatic sense of mission, perhaps manifestations of his own identity. He paints with vigorous brushstrokes of vibrant color that energize the entire surface.

Sandro Chia studied at the Istituto d'Arte and then at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence, where he graduated in 1969. Since the 1980s he has exhibited widely in Europe and the United States, particularly in New York City, where he lived and worked until the early 2000s. Today, Chia continues to work between his studios in Miami and Rome, as well as producing a prestigious line of award-winning wines at his Castello Romitorio winery in Montalcino.

Chia's work is included in prestigious public and private collections around the world, including the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Castello di Rivoli, Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Rivoli, Italy; Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany; and Tate, London, England. Major solo exhibitions include Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1983), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1984), Staatliche Kunsthalle, Berlin (1984), Nationalgalerie, Berlin (1992), Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (1984), Mumok, Vienna (1989), Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City (1989), Galleria Civica D'Arte Contemporanea, Trento (1990), Villa Medici, Rome (1995), Palazzo Reale, Milan (1997), Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Florence (2002), Duomo di St. Agostino, Pietrasanta (2002). Agostino, Pietrasanta (2005), Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, The Hague (2008), Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Rome (2010), Galleria Civica di Modena, Italy (2011).