Sandro Chia

Born in 1946 in Florence, Sandro Chia studied at the Istituto d'Arte and the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence, where he graduated in 1969. After graduating, he travelled extensively in India, Turkey and throughout Europe before settling in Rome in 1970. During the 1970s he began exhibiting in Rome and across Europe, gradually moving away from conceptual works towards a more figurative style. In 1980-1981 he received a fellowship in Monchengladbach, Germany, where he lived for a year. The following year he moved to New York City, where he remained for over two decades, making frequent trips to Montalcino (SI). He was a leading figure of the Transavanguardia movement, and his works have been exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the world. He has shown at the Biennales of Paris and São Paulo, and three times at the Venice Biennale.

Solo exhibitions have been devoted to him at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam (1983), the Metropolitan Museum in New York (1984), the Nationalgalerie in Berlin (1984, 1992), the Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris (1984), the museums of Düsseldorf (1984), Antwerp (1989) and Mexico City (1989), Palazzo Medici Riccardi in Florence (1991), the museums of Karlsruhe (1992) and Palm Springs (1993), Villa Medici in Rome (1995), Palazzo Reale in Milan (1997), the Boca Raton Museum of Art in Florida (1997), the Galleria Civica in Siena (1997), the Galleria Civica in Trento (2000) and the Museo d'Arte in Ravenna (2000).

In 2002 he exhibited at Palazzo Pitti and the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Florence. In 2003 the Italian State acquired three major works for the permanent collection of the Italian Senate at Palazzo Madama. In 2005 two monumental sculptures were acquired by the Province of Rome and installed in front of its headquarters in Via IV Novembre; that same year he exhibited at the church of Sant'Agostino in Pietrasanta.

In 2010 he held a solo exhibition at the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Rome (GNAM); his Brunello wine, produced at the Castello Romitorio estate in Montalcino, was awarded the prize for best red wine in the world at the London Wine Challenge. In 2011 a retrospective was held at the Foro Boario in Modena and at the MIC, Museo della Ceramica in Faenza. In 2012 the group retrospective Transavanguardia was mounted at Palazzo Reale in Milan, alongside a solo exhibition at the Galleria Biasutti in Turin. Between 2012 and 2015, solo exhibitions of his paintings, drawings and sculptures were held at Villa Manin in Padua, Steven Harvey Fine Arts in New York, Hillsboro Fine Art in Dublin, the Hangaram Art Museum in Seoul and the DeLand Museum in Florida. In 2014 the city of Livorno commissioned a monumental bronze sculpture to be placed in the newly restored square housing the Sant'Anna Research Centre. In 2015 the Brunello from Castello Romitorio once again won the prize for best red wine in the world at the London Wine Challenge.

In 2016-2017 the CIAC Centro Italiano Arte Contemporanea in Foligno hosted the solo exhibition Sandro Chia. Il Viandante, featuring approximately fifty works, many of them new pieces created especially for the space. In 2019 his exhibition L'esercito dell'imperatore, curated by Alberto Fiz, inaugurated the new Milan space of gallery AreaB: on show were six life-size polychrome terracotta warriors from Xi'an, a horse, and a series of large-scale paintings. In 2020 he exhibited at the Marc Straus Gallery in New York with the solo show Duck Soup. In 2024 the LAGOBAVA Palazzo Pironi art space presented the solo exhibition Sandro Chia – Opere su carta, featuring a selection of mixed-media works from 1998 to 2017. In early 2025 the Fondazione Biscozzi | Rimbaud in Lecce hosted Sandro Chia. I due pittori. Opere su carta 1989-2017, curated by Lorenzo Madaro, with one hundred works on paper tracing his artistic research through memory, irony and visual narrative. In 2026 the Marc Straus Gallery in New York devoted an exhibition to him to mark fifteen years of collaboration, curated by David Ebony.

He currently lives between Miami, Rome and his Castello Romitorio wine estate in Montalcino, where he is also closely involved in the production of prestigious wines.