Paolo Cotani biography

Paolo Cotani is an Italian painter and artist. He was born in Rome on 5 November 1940. After graduating from Art 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 followed courses at the French Academy, participating in some collective exhibitions.
From 1964 to 1970 he stayed in London where, thanks to his friendship with Joseph Rykwert, he obtained the professorship at Colchester School of Art where he holds courses on Techniques and materials of the historical avant-garde and where he works for various theater productions.
In 1968 he held his first solo exhibition at the Galleria Ferro by Cavallo di Roma. At the beginning of the Seventies, Paolo Cotani joined that area of ​​research interested in the analysis of the syntactic tools of language, known as Grade Zero of painting.
The first contacts with Giorgio Cortenova began in 1971 and Filiberto Menna, theorist of Analytical Painting. In 1975 he exhibited the first elastic bandages at the IX Paris Biennial and, in the same year, he exhibited in the exhibition Analytische Malerei organized by the Galleria La Bertesca in the venues of Genoa, Milan and Düsseldorf. In 1977 he was invited to the 16 Italian Artists exhibition in Rotterdam. In 1979 he held his first solo exhibition at the Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara. The first works with the shaped aluminum support, Gli Archi and Le Vele, are from this period, before returning later to painting with the theme of Clouds.
In the eighties he met Ralph Gibson with whom he established a long collaboration, and with whom he created the exhibition Metafora at the Cantieri Navali in 1981 della Giudecca, in Venice for which they created together the lithographs of the Metafora series, also proposed at New York by Castelli Graphics. In 1985 he was invited to the exhibition L'Italie aujourd'hui / Italia Oggi set up at Villa Arson, Nice. The following year he participated in the XI Quadrennial in Rome. The Cancellazioni and Tensioni, elastic bandages mounted on steel structures, date back to the early nineties.
In 1991 he held the anthological exhibition The constancy of vision at Palazzo Forti at Verona. In 2008 he exhibited at the exhibition Pittura Analitica - The Italian paths 1970-1980 at the Permanente of Milan. While preparing the exhibition at the Palazzo Ducale in Senigallia, Poalo Cotani died in January 2011.