Renato Volpini
Renato Volpini was born in Naples in 1934 but grew up in Urbino where he graduated from the School of Art in 1957. Since e lived and worked in Milan.
His artistic career began in the second half of the 1950s. Initially, he worked on the fringes of Informalism, later drawing some influence from Pop Art—albeit in original forms, as he never embraced the idealization of merchandise and industrial products typical of many American artists.
However, the first clear examples of his artistic maturity emerged in his explorations of figuration and spatiality. From the mid-1960s onwards, as Roberto Sanesi observed, Volpini’s “object” became “animalized,” presenting itself as a “hallucinatory and often ironic mechanism.” This was the era when the artist invented “useless machines,” modules, imaginary animals, digital characters or “Martians,” and paroxysmal contraptions with dreamlike and mechanical forms, all marked by a sense of ominous cosmic foreboding and a vein of irreverent humor.
His work gained critical attention in the 1960s with an exhibition at the Galleria Profili in Milan, alongside Adami, Del Pezzo, and Romagnoni. Around the same period, he participated in the new trends of the Milanese art scene, maintaining his independence while engaging with key figures of Pop Art and Critical Image.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Volpini continued his intense artistic research, exploring with renewed vigor techniques he had already extensively experimented with, such as constructing structures from diverse materials, collage, screen printing, and watercolor.
As a painter and sculptor, Volpini was undoubtedly one of the foremost engravers in contemporary art. His exceptional skills as a composer of etchings and aquatints, and as a refined experimenter in all engraving techniques, earned admiration from many artists, both Italian and international. These included Fontana, Baj, Giacometti, Alechinsky, Matta, Wifredo Lam, and Warhol.
First featured at the Venice Biennale in 1962, Volpini subsequently participated in major group exhibitions in Italy and abroad, including a show at the Philadelphia Art Alliance in 1967 alongside Bonfanti, Cappello, Nangeroni, and Scanavino.
From the mid-1990s, with significant exhibitions in Italy (Galleria Manzoni) and abroad (Geneva, Portland), Volpini’s work once again became a point of reference on the national and international art scene. This was further confirmed by several exhibitions in the early 2000s: Renato Volpini, curated by Carlo Schaub and Marius Hernberg, Designers Work Team, Geneva, 2001; Le Macchine Metamorfiche, curated by Floriano De Santi, Palazzo Ducale, Urbino, 2002; participation in Un Secolo Arte Italiana – Lo Sguardo del Collezionista – Opere dalla Fondazione VAF, MART, Rovereto, 2005; and Volpini Ieri e Oggi, curated by Gillo Dorfles, Annunciata Galleria d’Arte, Milan, 2008.
Of particular note are the two monographic volumes: Volpini anni Sessanta and Renato Volpini anni Sessanta… e oltre,published in limited editions. In these volumes, the artist presented, alongside his historical works, his original ODMs (Original-Digital-Media Works), which marked the final phase of his career.
Renato Volpini passed away in Milan on February 3, 2017.
