Valerio Adami (Bologna, 1935) is one of the most recognisable Italian painters of the second half of the twentieth century, and a central figure of European Nouvelle figuration. Raised in Milan, he trained at the studio of Felice Carena and the Accademia di Brera under Achille Funi, then in London — where he encountered Francis Bacon and Richard Hamilton — and in Paris, his city of choice, where from 1970 he worked exclusively with Galerie Maeght.
His language is immediately distinctive: flat areas of saturated colour bounded by sharp black lines, figures set in anonymous interiors or suspended landscapes that move between knowing comic-strip imagery, surrealism and narrative painting. From 1966 he developed his series of literary portraits — Nietzsche, Freud, Benjamin, Derrida — where line traces not a likeness but the outline of a thought. He participated in Documenta 3 in Kassel in 1964 and in the Venice Biennale in 1968. In 2000 he founded the Fondazione Europea del Disegno in Meina. In 2025, to mark his ninetieth year, Fondazione Marconi in Milan dedicated a major solo exhibition to him, with historical works from 1963 to 1973. His works are held at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and in public and private collections worldwide.
