Orlando Donadi - Harlequin with Guitar

Since the 19th century, when painting began to explore various aspects of bourgeois life, the circus world has been a theme explored by various artists. With the development of Symbolist and Expressionist movements between the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the figure of the acrobat, circus performer, or mask began to gain popularity, as it played a key role in the development of complex iconographies with hidden and mysterious meanings. Examples include the figures of artists and harlequins immortalized by Picasso during his "blue" and "rose" periods. During the 1970s and 1980s, it became a true genre, practiced by many painters, who focused their interest primarily on the figure of the clown.

Orlando Donadi's style is highly interesting and original. He seeks to represent reality in an extremely dynamic manner, breaking down space and the subject within it, exploring, through painting, the relationships between the subject and the space and the potential possibilities of movement. Thus, especially in moving subjects, but also in static figures, Donadi seeks to highlight the potential dynamism and interactions with space. For this reason, the painting is conceived as a continuum between subject and background, in which the figure and the surrounding environment are subject to the same decomposition. The systematic decomposition of reality takes into account every possible variable, every possible development. The perceptible world is thus transformed into an intricate interplay of planes that reflects its complexity even in the choice of color palette.

Orlando Donadi was born in Treviso in 1943. He held his first solo exhibition in 1965. Since then, he has exhibited in many European and American cities, receiving awards, glowing reviews, and important commissions. Among all, it is worth mentioning the VI International Art Biennial in Barcelona in 1979, the installation of a work in the Assad Mausoleum in Damascus in 1997, the exhibition at the Bischöfliches Dom und Diözesanmuseum in Trier in 1998, an important exhibition at the Civic Museum of Abano Terme (Padua) in 1999, the IV prize at the International Biennial of Contemporary Art Fortezza da Basso in Florence again in 1999, the Fiorino d'oro award at Palazzo Vecchio, Salone dei Cinquecento, in Florence in 2000, an exhibition at the Museum of Science and Technology in Vienna in 2001, an exhibition at the Churburg Castle in 2004; in September 2007, he held an important solo exhibition at the Museo Nazionale Villa Pisani in Strà (VE); In 2011, he presented a prestigious solo exhibition at Forte Sangallo in Nettuno (Rome), while in 2014 he exhibited at Palazzo Correr in Venice. In 2014, he opened a permanent solo exhibition in Venice, an event that was also covered by the New York Times.

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