Walter Valentini

Walter Valentini was born in 1928 in Pergola, in the province of Pesaro-Urbino.

Between 1947 and 1948 he was in Rome and in 1949 he moved to Milan, where he studied under Max Huber, Albe Steiner and Luigi Veronesi. In 1950 he left Lombardy for Urbino, where he lived until 1955 and attended the Institute of Fine Arts (Scuola dei Libro). It was here that he discovered the art of printmaking and came into contact with the Renaissance culture of which the Marche city preserves fundamental testimonies that would leave deep marks on his future work.

Valentini devoted himself mainly to research in the graphic and printmaking fields, also participating in several specialized exhibitions. After completing his studies, he left Urbino in 1955 to return to Milan, where he has resided ever since. There he pursued professional activity in the field of graphic design.

It is a geometric universe that fascinated him, charged with resonances that at first seemed to register echoes of de Chirico's Metaphysical art. It is precisely these more profoundly formal aspects that Valentini refined in the 1970s, also from a technical point of view, in a fertile interplay of chalcographic and pictorial experiences, with characteristic attention—beyond the execution processes and materials—to the determination of space, with the implicit, necessary temporal values it entails.

Along a path that by the end of the decade, in works now dominated by white, led him to a spare conciseness, expressed also in the vast dimensions of environmental intervention, and which would reach, in the 1980s, the now-defined results of the "Stanze del tempo" and the "Muro del tempo", which found new development in the series dedicated to the "Città del sole" and the "Città Ideale", and then in the large works of the cycle "Le misure, il cielo".

Increasingly frequent exhibition participations, also outside Italy, while critical contributions on his work and recognition increased, both in Italy and abroad. In 1979 the University of Massachusetts in Boston invited him to a seminar within an exhibition of Italian artists "Birth of the work". In 1982 he won first prize at the International Biennial of Ibiza and Listowel. In 1984 he was awarded the Grand Prix of the X International Biennial of Graphic Arts in Krakow, which in 1986 organized a personal anthological exhibition for him in Krakow and Torun.

In 1988 he created an installation in the monks' hall of the Abbey of S. Maria in Cagnola in Chiaravalle (Ancona) and a large work on panel "La città del sole", for the Camera del Lavoro in Reggio Emilia. In 1989 he was invited to Ljubljana, with a personal room at the XVIII International Biennial of Graphic Arts. In the same year an anthological exhibition of his graphic and pictorial work was arranged in the Palazzo dell'Arengo in the city of Rimini.

From 1990 are two large works for the building of Ashford Properties in Greenwich, Connecticut (USA) and the installation for the Museum of Sieburg (Germany); from 1991, the installation "Lo spazio, il tempo" for the Harris Concert Hall in Aspen, Colorado (USA) and "La Città ideale" for Palazzo Montani Antaldi, Pesaro; from 1992, the installation "Il Labirinto della Memoria" at Frearte in Milan.

Increasingly numerous personal exhibitions in private galleries and museums; Italian ones (in Milan in 1990 and in his native municipality of Pergola in 1993) and foreign ones (Boston, Stockholm, Hamburg, Cologne, New York, Aspen, Tokyo, Munich, Siegburg, Vienna, Ankara).

Between 1995 and 1996 the personal exhibition "L'Espace, le temps", at the Galerie Dionne in Paris and again in 1996 he participated in the XXXème Prix Internazionale d'Arte Contemporanea in Monte Carlo (Principality of Monaco) and won the "Prix Gabriel Ollivier". In 1997 he was invited to the LVII edition of the Venice Biennial, in the section "Unimplosive art" (towards the new classicism) and in 1999 to the Quadriennale of Rome, Palazzo le Esposizioni.

Also in 1999 and then in 2000 he exhibited at the Italian Institute of Culture in Washington and Chicago "Valentini nei canti di G. Leopardi".

Also notable is Valentini's activity in the illustration of literary texts in prestigious limited-edition publications, among them: "La città del sole", "I Canti" by Giacomo Leopardi, "Dante Anarca e i suoi sei maestri" by Giacomo Oreglia, with introductory essay by Mario Luzi, "La notte viene col canto" by Mario Luzi, "Travasare il miele" by Basilio Reale, up to the more recent "Galileo" with preface by Cesare Barbieri.

In 2008 at the Mole Vanvitelliana the Marche Region and the Municipality of Ancona organized the anthological exhibition "È una notte stellata". The exhibition brings together paintings, prints and sculptures that represent the artistic path of the master from the 1970s onwards and for the following forty years of research, highlighting its phases and the experimentation of techniques and materials.

The installation was conceived in such a way as to give the visitor the possibility of choosing the path: either towards the sky, the infinite, or towards the earth, with works depicting doors, which are in any case a passage that leads to the sky. On the occasion of the exhibition, the sculpture in polished bronze with patina titled "Arco del Cielo" was installed at the center of the Tempietto in the Courtyard of the Mole Vanvitelliana. The work, over 2 metres high, was donated by the artist to the Marche Region and today can still be admired by all those who visit Ancona to see the building designed by Luigi Vanvitelli.

In 2014 the exhibition "Siderea Mensura" opened at the exhibition venues of Monte Vidon Corrado (FM) and Fermo. At the Casa Museo and the Osvaldo Licini Study Centre approximately forty works including paintings and sculptures were displayed, while the Biblioteca Civica Spezioli in Fermo housed artist's books and graphic works. On the occasion of this exhibition the master created the work on panel "La danza delle Stelle", a tribute to Osvaldo Licini, of whom Walter Valentini can be considered the heir.

On 16 July of that same year the personal exhibition "Promenade dal 1974 al 2014" opened at the Galleria Ca' Pesaro in Pesaro, which through paintings, prints and sculptures retraces the entire artistic path of Valentini. Ten days later in Novilara an exhibition dedicated to the Marche artist was launched titled "La Grande Misura". It consists mainly of graphic works (etchings, aquatints and drypoints) of large dimensions covering a chronological span of approximately thirty years (1985-2005).

He died in Milan on 20 May 2022.

Discover available works by Walter Valentini at Stefanini Arte.