Paolo Cotani biography

Paolo Cotani is an Italian painter and artist. He was born in Rome on November 5, 1940. After graduating from the Art High School, he went to Paris in 1959 to study tapestry and stained glass techniques at the Academy of Decorative Arts. Returning to Rome in 1961, he attended courses at the French Academy and participated in several group exhibitions.
From 1964 to 1970, he stayed in London where, thanks to his friendship with Joseph Rykwert, he obtained a professorship at the Colchester School of Art where he taught courses on Techniques and Materials of the Historical Avant-Gardes and worked on various theatrical productions.
In 1968, he held his first solo exhibition at the Galleria Ferro di Cavallo di Roma. In the early Seventies, Paolo Cotani joined the research area focused on the analysis of the syntactic tools of language, known as Grado Zero della pittura.
Since 1971, the first contacts with Giorgio Cortenova and Filiberto Menna, theorist of Analytical Painting, begin. In 1975, he exhibits the first elastic bandages at the IX Paris Biennale and, in the same year, he exhibits in the Analytische Malerei exhibition organized by the Galleria La Bertesca in the venues of Genoa, Milan, and Düsseldorf. In 1977, he is invited to the exhibition 16 Italian Artists in Rotterdam. In 1979, he sets up his first solo exhibition at the Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara. From this period are the first works with shaped aluminum support, Gli Archi and Le Vele, later returning to painting with the theme of Nuvole.
In the eighties, he meets Ralph Gibson with whom he establishes a long collaboration, and with whom he creates the exhibition Metafora in 1981 at the Cantieri Navali della Giudecca in Venice, for which they jointly create the lithographs of the series Metafora, also presented in New York by Castelli Graphics. In 1985, he is invited to the exhibition L’Italie aujourd’hui / Italia oggi set up at Villa Arson, Nice. The following year, he participates in the XI Quadriennale in Rome. The early nineties see the creation of Cancellazioni and Tensioni, elastic bands mounted on steel structures.
In 1991, he held the retrospective exhibition The Consistency of Vision at Palazzo Forti in Verona. In 2008, he exhibited at the show Analytical Painting - The Italian Paths 1970-1980 at the Permanente in Milan. While preparing the exhibition at the Palazzo Ducale in Senigallia, Paolo Cotani died in January 2011.