Zorio, Gilberto (1944-9-21)
Adorno Micca (Vercelly, Italy)
works and lives in Torino (Italy)

Gilberto Zorio was born on 21 September 1944 at Adorno Micca, Italy. In 1963 he enrolled as a painting student at the Fine Arts Academy in Turin, but did not take long changing to sculpture. In 1967 he held his first solo exhibition at the Galleria Sperone in Turin, where he displayed three-dimensional works.

The end of the nineteen sixties saw the advent of Arte Povera, a trend of which he became one of the nayor exponents. In this context Gilberto Zorio began to carry out research into humble materials and chemical and material processes that bring aboutchemical reactions and transformations when combined, thus producing an autonomousalteration of the artwork not controlled by the artist. One of his main concerns is the idea of energy, and the star and the javelin, two figures related with this concept, became recurrent elements in his work.

It is the notion of the autonomous transformation of the artwork that characterises his oeuvre, as we can see in Fluiditáradicale, 1971, Giavelotti con imnpugnatura, 1978, Stella marrano, 1991, Canoa di Modena, 1996 or Los Zorios, 1995. Since 1967 Gilberto Zorio has taken part in the most important exhibitions of Arte Povera, and his work has received recognition at museums and in major international collections since 1976.

That year an important solo exhibition of his work was held at the Kunstmuseum in Lucerne, which was followed by others at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam (1979); The Galleria Civica in Modena and the Kunstverein in Stuttgart (1985); the centre d´art Contemporain in Geneva and the Centre George Pompidou in Paris (1986); The Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia (1988); the Fundaçao de Serralves in Oporto (1990); the IVAM, Institut Valencia d´Art Modern in Valencia (1991); the Centro per l Árte Contempornaea de Luigi Pecci in Prato (1992); the Musée d´Art Moderne et d´Art Contemporain in Nice (1992) ; and the Galleria Civica d´Arte Contemporaneo in Trent (1996).