Chia, Sandro. – Italian painter and sculptor (b. Florence 1946). Trained in Florence at the Academy of Fine Arts, he travelled to India, Turkey and Europe, before settling in Rome in 1970. Initially oriented towards conceptual art, in the mid-1970s Ch. approached figuration, emerging among the protagonists of transavant-garde. Since 1981 he has moved to New York, working between the United States and Italy. He has developed an ironic and allusive language, rich in references to Renaissance art and artistic movements of the first half of the twentieth century. He has made large-format works, characterized by the use of full-bodied and bright chromatic mixtures and by a strong and dynamic pictorial sign, frequently populated by heroic male figures that return also in bronze sculptures, often painted in bright colors. He exhibited his works in important exhibitions and in numerous solo exhibitions (1983, New York, S. R. Guggenheim Museum; 1984, New York, Metropolitan museum of art; 1984 and 1988, Venice Biennale; 1992, Berlin, Nationalgalerie; 1995, Roma, Villa Medici; 1997, Siena, Magazzini del sale; 2000, Trento, Galleria Civica di arte contemporanea; 2002, Florence, Palazzo Pitti; 2003, Milano, Spazio Bisazza; 2006, San Josè, Costa Rica, Klaus Steinmetz Modern Art; 2007, Pietrasanta, cathedral of Sant’Agostino; 2009-10, Rome, National Gallery of Modern Art).
