Miniati Roberto Artist Byography
Miniati Roberto Artist Byography
Painting Passion
Roberto Miniati was born in Rome on May 14, 1952 to a family of Florentine descent. His love of drawing begins as a child, in bed, often stopped by an annoying inflammation of the appendix: “I repeatedly copied the characters of my favorite comics, I longed a lot for those moments once healed”. It was the beginning of a love that in the sixties led him to create his first works. He studied, graduated and collaborated from a young age in the management of his father’s company, watchmaker and jeweler. Fascinated by the variety of colors and shades of minerals and gems , he develops a passion for precious stones and he is among the first in Italy to claim the title of gemologist. He enrolls in the Faculty of Psychology driven by a strong interest in the knowledge of the mechanisms of the unconscious, at the same time he attends several private art academies, eventually abandoning them, in search of his own art form that he will find only in his self-taught experience. Over time he increasingly refines his artistic knowledge, getting to meet art dealers from all over Italy and becoming himself an eager collector. He begins his own painting activity but at the same time he is increasingly engaged in the family business, and after having both parents involved in a terrible car accident and forced to a long hospitalization, he decides to take the reins of the trading company. He paints when possible, he sacrifices the hours of the night and his holidays, he deeply feels a need for that language that now sustains him. His pictorial gesture encompasses the influence of art readings and visits to museums and while explicitly referring to the historical avant-gardes of the 20th, to geometric abstraction, to American expressionism and post-war artists, it is constantly looking for a personal and individual figure. He feels that an intense art practice can help him solve his personal enigma, simply through the things he loves most: color, gesture, sign. In the period of time from the seventies to the beginning of the 1990s he intensely devoted himself to the knowledge and study of the authors he loves most, alternating pictorial activity with long periods of reflection. His painting is unthought, but inwardly mediated, unplanned, always coherent to a search for continuous inner evolution, an endless dialogue with himself, certainly influenced by his university studies. At the same time, there is a growing need to bring his strongly internalized pictorial language to the surface, a silent and intense dialogue with “the other”. Fundamental is the esteem and friendship that connects him to some of the most important Italian gallery owners who push him and convince him to exhibit his works. He embarked on increasingly continuous connection with Volos Gallery and Mucciaccia Gallery in Rome. In the first decade of the 2000s the meeting with Giuseppe Orler will mark a turning point: he is offered the opportunity to exhibit his works in their television broadcasts dedicated to contemporary art. The great visibility and seriousness that distinguishes the family of the founder Ermanno Orler, contributes to the realization of a series of very important exhibition events.
A first cycle of works considered crucial by Miniati, are those produced since the 2000s and called “Esigenze”. These the works represent the first step towards his own pictorial language. The inner drive is powerful and becomes a “need” to be met, urgent, primary, a need that has never ceased today. In 2010 a catalogue of works published by the Orler Galleries gives him the chance to meet Michele Beraldo, who was invited to write the critical text. Mutual esteem will bring to a friendship still bright to this day. Next comes a very important and meaningful cycle, entitled “I Maestri del Colore”, that he dedicates to his father. A parental key figure, who was able to enthuse his son in the study of art history through the files of the Fabbri series dedicated to the great artists. Miniati paints over their covers, creating a cycle of works collected in two times and published after a time in two catalogues curated by Beraldo himself. Meeting Victoria, his present wife, and especially the birth in 2011 of his son Davide , mark in him an important change that is reflected on the emotional level and on his pictorial expression. The color fields that cover the canvas come alive with veils, rarefactions and new thicknesses, sometimes giving the impression of a fresco. Equally important, bringing renewed energies, will follow the births of Pietro and Giulio.
In 2012 he participated, being invited, to the 6th Biennale di Ferrara with five works. In the same year he exhibited in Venice with the artists Meggiato and Toffoletti in the halls of the Molino Stucky. In 2012 he was invited by the Galleria Mucciaccia to participate with other important artists in the performance “Suite 307” at The First Luxury Art Hotel in Rome. In October 2013 he set up a large personal exhibition at the Museo Magi ‘900 in Pieve di Cento (Bologna). In 2014 he had an important solo exhibition at the National Museum of Villa Pisani in Strà (Venice), where he found Michele Beraldo as curator. Still in 2014 he participated in the Triennale di Roma, where he will meet art critic Daniele Radini Tedeschi, a fundamental meeting that will mark the beginning of a cycle of prestigious exhibitions. It will be Radini Tedeschi, curator of the National Pavilion of Guatemala, who invites him to exhibit an installation at the 56th Biennale di Venezia in 2015. In the meantime, he continues his research by painting cycles of works called “Beautifull World”, “Sovrapposizioni” and “Piogge”, cycles in which the need to explore new signs and meanings emerges. As part of the work done for the Orler family, he has the great opportunity and the privilege of getting to know Prof. Giovanni Faccenda, a high-profile expert of great humanity. This encounter is considered essential by Miniati for the support he will offer him in the following years. Thanks to Faccenda and to never forgotten Leopoldo Pacciscopi, one of the founders in 1946 in Florence of the avant-garde group Arte d’ Oggi, he is invited in 2015, by the municipality of Fiesole, to present an important solo exhibition in the prestigious “Sala del Basolato” where he exhibits his works together with those of De Chirico, Burri, Mirò, Modigliani, Castellani, Bill, Riopelle, Afro, Hartung and many others, including those of his dear friend Luca Alinari. Between 2015 and 2016, he was present in China along with other artists in a traveling exhibition curated by Brun Fine Art – Giorio Fine Art – Beijing Art Gallery. In the meantime, he participated, invited, at the 2015 Biennale Internazionale d’Arte di Asolo, winning the first prize in the painting section with the work “Madonna con Bambino”. In 2016 he exhibited at the Soleri Arte gallery in Rimini. We find him again with one of his works, in 2017, at 57. International Art Exhibition “Biennale di Venezia” in Guatemala’s National Pavilion. The intervention and appreciation received for the works proposed by Radini Tedeschi and by art critic Stefania Pieralice, curators of the event, is fundamental for the participation. In the same year, for the second time in a row, he was present at the Triennale di Roma. Invited for the third time in a row, he participated with his installation at the 58th International Art Exhibition “Biennale di Venezia” 2017 in the National Pavilion of Grenada curated by Susan Mains. In 2018 he began an interesting cooperation with an important Art and Design Gallery, Christopher Anthony Ltd in Palm Springs, a new commitment that will lead him to successfully confront the American market. Also in 2018, the “Marican Holding Spa” a major company in the south centre of Italy invited him to cooperate in the restructuring of the paediatric oncology department of the “Pausillipon” hospital in Naples.
After a careful study of the childish visual dynamics, he donates an important series of works intended for the adornment of the hospital department. He is appointed by Marican as Artistic Consultant in the realization of environmental works with intervention on industrial buildings and artistic projects of facades, and the artistic direction of an art Foundation linked to it. In 2019, after being invited by his friend Paolo Orler, he dedicates to the gallery in Madonna di Campiglio a group of new works entitled “Citta’ sconosciute”, characterized by an intense and deep painting. Miniati writes about this new cycle: “I am convinced, now more than before, that the path of a pictorial expression in art, offers more possibilities for different encounter than the language of our daily life. When we are animated by something, strong in its presence but difficult to define, we are led to seek a higher meaning, a sense that helps us to develop a language of interpretation. In my painting I always try to approach, to meet this part of the elsewhere that we carry inside of ourselves, thus trying to get to this encounter through the filter of painting, in a dense dialogue. So at least this has been for me, all these years.”
Lives and works in Rome
Galleries
Gallerie Orler Venice – Mestre – Abano – Madonna di Campiglio
Christopher Anthony Ltd Gallery, Palm Springs (United States)
Volos Galleria Rome
Galleria Mucciaccia Roma – Singapore – London – Cortina D’Ampezzo
Perm Gallery (Russia)
Gallery Soleri Arte Rimini