Il Volto, 1998

Oliviero Rainaldi  

He was born in Abruzzo in Caramanico Terme in 1956. From 1975 to 1978 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice with Emilio Vedova, he graduated in the following years with Fabio Mauri at the Academy of Fine Arts -Arts of L'Aquila.

Rainaldi made his debut with his first solo exhibition in Venice in 1976.

His work focuses on the human figure, analyzed through the different languages of drawing, graphics, painting and sculpture. After having started with compositions with a veiled narrative character, around the 90s he moved on to the representation of isolated figures, fixed by a linear sign in their ideal essentiality, in which bodies and body fragments manifest subtle and subterranean links with cultures. archaic and medieval. , as in the cycles of works Gisant, 1990, Battesimi Umani, 1992, Caduti, 1993, Santo, 2000, Conversazioni, 2004, Vergine, 2006, Malebolge, 2007, Copia, 2010, Naiadi, 2012.

Over the years, Rainaldi's work is linked to historical names and places outside traditional exhibition spaces, creating works in dialogue with: Bernini, Sant'Andrea al Quirinale Complex, Dono del Mattino, Rome, 2000 , Vanvitelli, Sala of the State Attorney General, Rome, 2012, Bramante, Tempietto, Nada y Todo, Rome, 2014, Caravaggio, Church of Pio Monte della Misericordia, The Eight Works of Mercy, Naples 2018.

Among the most important personal exhibitions: Gallery of Modern Art in Bologna, 2003, Palazzo Venezia, Rome, 2006, Gardens of Villa Aldombrandini, 2010, Rome In 2011, the same exhibition will move to the National Museum of Villa Pisani, Venice and in 2013, on the occasion of the 55th Venice Biennale, invited by the International University of Venice on the island of San Servolo.

This series of exhibitions, between 2015 and 2016 will be followed in Asia at the Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art, Petronas Gallery in Kuala Lumpur and finally at the Partners & Mucciaccia Gallery, Singapore. In 2017 in Dubai, the DIFC (Dubai International Financial Center) invited him to exhibit with a double solo exhibition of outdoor sculptures that Rainaldi shared with Sir Tony Craig.

At the end of the 90s, Rainaldi deepened his personal interest in the relationship between art and liturgy after the two-year study period at the Sant'Anselmo Theological Institute and the three-year theology for lay people in Rome. : he is then entrusted with various ecclesiastical commissions for which he will produce the liturgical furniture for the churches of Rome, Terni, Prato and Warsaw.

During the Jubilee of 2000, John Paul II awarded him the title of Academician of the Pontifical Academy of Fine Arts and Letters of the Virtuosos of the Pantheon.

In 2010 he received the European Personality Award at the Campidoglio in Rome, in 2015 the Brand Personality Award from the Asia Pacific Brand Foundation and in 2017, at the Senate, the Franco Cuomo International Award.

The Maserati Group in 2015 to celebrate 100 years of the car manufacturer commissioned Neptune dans le vent, a large backlit marble bas-relief. In 2016 he was appointed Academician by the University of Roma Tre.

Over the years he has created the work for the Robert F. Kennedy Foundation of Europe, the Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, Michigam, the portrait of the Queen of Malaysia, various monumental works for the Grimaldi Group and , in 2011, the sculpture dedicated to John Paul II in Piazza dei Cinquecento in Rome.

His works are present in the permanent collections of national and international public institutions including: Human Baptisms, seat of the Nobel Prize, Town Hall, Stockholm, 1995; Human Baptisms, UN Building, Geneva, 1998; Vergine, Collection of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Rome; Santo, Pontifical Council for Culture, Vatican City, 2012; Fallen, Soumaya Foundation, Mexico 2015.