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Fabrizio Clerici (15 May 1913 – 7 June 1993) was an Italianpainter.
Clerici was a complex and eclectic artist and was also an architect, costume designer, scenographer and photographer. His works were exhibited in many museums in the United States, including theMoMA and theGuggenheim Museum, and in France, such as theCentre Pompidou.
His most renowned works areIl Minotauro accusa pubblicamente sua madre,Sonno romano (1955);Le Confessioni palermitane (1954);Minerva phlegraea (1956–57);Le Krak des Chevaliers (1968).
In 1920 Clerici moved to Rome, where he studied at the Scuola Superiore di Architettura, and obtained an architecture degree in 1937. The Roman monuments, architecture and paintings from theItalian Renaissance and the baroque period considerably influence him, as did certain religious works, due to their spectacular aspect. Later,Sonno romano (1955) would reawaken those memories. In Rome he attended conferences byLe Corbusier, and in 1936 he became a friend ofAlberto Savinio; they admired each other's work.[1] In 1938 he metGiorgio de Chirico in Milan. At the end of the 1930s he made his first dreamlike and fantastic paintings, based on his memory of events, locations and persons transformed by the filter of time. Through his reconstruction of images, Clerici evolved naturally towardssurrealism. However, the actual motive of Clerici remainedmetaphysical.
Upon his return to Rome after theSecond World War he closely perused the scientific studies ofAthanasius Kircher,Erhard Schön andJean François Niceron. In 1944 he wrote an article in the reviewQuadrante describing his meeting withLeonor Fini. In January 1945 he and Savinio participated in a collective exhibition. In 1947 he collaborated withLucio Fontana in the projectPatio per una casa al mare, for Handicraft Development, Inc. in New York. Until 1948, Clerici continued to produce drawings and engravings; in 1949 he produced large-scale paintings in which architecture was the major harmonic component. Later he travelled to the Middle East – Egypt, Syria andJordan – as well as to Libya and Turkey. From those travels Clerici developed two themes: the "mirages" and the "temples of the egg", cycles of constructions set in the desert and spiralling from a central core containing a hypothetical primordial egg.
In parallel to his paintings, which became more and more fantastic and magical, he worked for the theatre. On this return from Egypt he created sets forLa vedova scaltra byCarlo Goldoni under the direction ofGiorgio Strehler. Before that he had produced the sets of a number of ballets and lyric works, always with the theme of a fantastic world.
He then made the sets and costumes forIgor Stravinsky's balletOrpheus, presented at theLa Fenice theatre in Venice in 1948; forDido and Aeneas byHenry Purcell and forThe Rape of Lucretia byBenjamin Britten, both at theTeatro dell'Opera di Roma and directed byAlberto Lattuada (1949); forArmide byJean-Baptiste Lully (1950); for the comic operaGianni Schicchi byGiacomo Puccini, directed byPeter Ustinov at theRoyal Opera House inCovent Garden (1962); and forAli Baba byLuigi Cherubini, at theLa Scala in Milan.
Over a two-year period he helped create the bigstained glass windowLa fede di Santa Caterina for theBasilica of San Domenico inSiena (1957).
In 1964 he began a series of tables forOrlando furioso ofLudovico Ariosto. In 1968, on the occasion of theBerliner Festspiele, he participated in two exhibitions on painting and scenography in theNeue Nationalgalerie and theGalerie im Rathaus Tempelhof.
In 1970 he produced for Berlin'sPropyläen Verlag an edition ofThe Travels of Marco Polo (Il Milione) ofMarco Polo, with tables and original lithographs. The drawings were exhibited with other paintings at theGalerie Brusberg inHanover (1971). In 1974-75 he painted a cycle around the themeIsle of the Dead ofArnold Böcklin.
In 1977 he made a series of lithographs for an edition ofLe bestiaire byGuillaume Apollinaire. During the same year three important retrospective exhibitions were dedicated to Clerici at theMuseum of Western and Oriental Art in Kiev, the Fine Arts Museum inAlmaty and thePushkin Museum in Moscow. In the 1970s he produced Egyptian-inspired works entitledVariazioni tebane. In 1980–1981 he completed a cycle of paintings around the theme of violence, entitledI corpi di Orvieto. At the same time he worked on a series of large colour tables entitledLe impalcature della Sistina.
In 1983 an exhibition was dedicated to him at thePalazzo dei Diamanti inFerrara. In 1984, he visitedSamarkand andBukhara. In 1987 a retrospective exhibition was dedicated to him at theReggia di Caserta, with a catalogue edited byFranco Maria Ricci.
After his death theArchivio "Fabrizio Clerici" was created.
