A un passo dal cielo, Circa 1995
Walter Valentini

Walter Valentini (1928-2022)

Walter Valentini was born in 1928 in Pergola, province of Pesaro-Urbino (IT).

Between 1947 and 1948 he was in Rome and in 1949 in Milan where he was taught by Max Huber, Albe Steiner and Luigi Veronesi. In 1950, he left Lombardy for Urbino, where he resided until 1955 and attended the Institute of Fine Arts (Scuola dei Libro). It is here that he discovers the art of engraving and it is here that he comes into contact with the culture of the Renaissance, of which the city of the Marches preserves fundamental testimonies which will leave deep traces in his future activity.

Valentini is mainly dedicated to research in the field of graphics and engraving, also participating in some specialized journals. After completing his studies, he left Urbino to return to Milan in 1955, where he has resided ever since. Here he carries out professional activities in the field of graphic design. It is a geometric universe that fascinates him, full of resonances that seem at first to also register echoes of De Chirico's Metaphysics.

It is precisely these more deeply formal aspects that Valentini specifies in the seventies, also from a technical point of view, in a fertile game of chalcographic and pictorial experiences, with particular attention, in addition to processes and materials executives, to the determination of space, with the implicit and necessary temporal values.

Along a path that at the end of the decade, in works now dominated by white, leads him to a dry conciseness, also expressed in the great dimensions of environmental intervention and which will arrive, in the 80s, to the now defined results of the "Chambers of Time" and the "Wall of Time", which find a new development in the series devoted to the "City of the Sun" and the "Ideal City", and therefore in the large paintings of the cycle “The measures, The sky". Exhibitions are increasingly frequent, even outside Italy, while critical contributions to his work and awards, both in Italy and abroad, are increasing.

In 1979, the University of Massachusetts in Boston invited him to a seminar as part of an exhibition of Italian artists “Naissance de l'oeuvre". In 1982, he won first prize at the International Biennial of Ibiza and Listowel In 1984, he received the Grand Prize of the 10th International Biennial of Graphic Design in Krakow, which in 1986 organized a personal anthological exhibition for him in Krakow and Torun 1988 creates an installation in the hall of the monks of the Abbey of S. Maria in Cagnola in Chiaravalle (Ancona) and a large work on wood "The city of the sun", for the Chamber of Labor of Reggio Emilia.

In 1989, he was invited to Ljubljana, with a personal room at the XVIII International Graphic Design Biennial. In the same year, an anthological exhibition of his graphic and pictorial work was organized at the Arengo Palace in the city of Rimini. Two major works date from 1990 for the Ashford Properties building in Greenwich, Connecticus (USA) and the installation for the Sieburg Museum (Germany); in 1991, the installation “Space, time" for the Harris Concert Hall in Aspen, Colorado (USA) and “The ideal city" for the Palazzo Montani Antaldi, Pesaro; in 1992, the installation "The Labyrinth of Memory" at the Frearte in Milan.

Personal exhibitions in private galleries and museums are more and more numerous; Italians (in Milan in 1990 and in the native municipality of Pergola in 1993) and foreigners (Boston, Stockholm, Hamburg, Cologne, New York, Aspen, Tokyo, Munich, Siegburg, Vienna, Ankara). Between 1995 and 1996 the staff "l'Espace, le temps", at the Galerie Dionne in Paris and again in 1996 participated in the XXXth International Prize for Contemporary Art in Monte-Carlo (Principality of Monaco) and obtained the "Prix Gabriel Oliver".

In 1997, he was invited to the LVII edition of the Venice Biennale, in the "Non implosive art" section (towards new classicism) and in 1999 to the Rome Quadrennial, Palazzo le Esposizioni. Also in 1999 and then in 2000, he exhibited "er Valentini dans les chansons de G. Leopardi" at the Italian Cultural Institute in Washington and Chicago. before also the activity of Valentini in the illustration of literary texts in beautiful limited editions, among which: "The city of the sun", "I Canti" by Giacomo leopardi, "Dante Anarca and his six masters" by Giacomo Oreglia, with an introduction essay by Mario Luzi, "The night comes with a song" by Mario Luzi, "Transfer the honey" by Basilio Reale, up to the most recent "Galileo" with a preface by Cesare Barbieri.