Giuliano Vangi was born in Barberino di Mugello (Florence) on March 13, 1931. He studied at the Institute of Art in Florence and taught at the Institute of Art in Pesaro. After a period spent in São Paulo, Brazil (1959-62), he taught at the Institute of Art in Cantù, and since 1978 he has been based in Pesaro. He has participated in numerous exhibitions, and in 1995 he was invited to the Venice Biennale. The Forte del Belvedere in Florence hosted an important retrospective of his works, including the monumental and complex “Scala del cielo” (1995). In 1983, he was awarded the President of the Republic Prize by the Accademia di San Luca, and in 1998, he received the Antonio Feltrinelli Prize for sculpture from the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei.

Supported by masterful technical expertise and a profound knowledge of materials, from wood to marble, to metals (bronze, nickel, silver, aluminum), to fiberglass, Vangi’s research, initially non-figurative, has found original solutions in representing reality since 1963, particularly the human figure. His realism, exacerbated and at the same time undone by closed and contracted forms that block the figure in precarious balances (e.g., “Donna che ride,” 1968, polychrome aluminum; “Uomo che scende le scale,” 1976, nickel and silver), has achieved great formal synthesis, also through deliberate references to archaic civilizations. The refined polychromatic combinations of different materials, the treatment of surfaces that combine gleaming politeness with lacerations and fragmentations, in a contrast of energy and constraint, contribute to expressing contradictory feelings, such as the fundamental solitude of man and his particular relationship with nature (e.g., “Uomo e gabbiani,” 1974, bronze, nickel, silver, and aluminum; “Uomo in piedi con i capelli rossi,” 1980, bronze, copper, nickel, silver, and gold; “Donna nel paesaggio,” 1987, bas-relief in marble; “Donna con piede nell’acqua,” 1994, marble; “Uomo che si riflette nell’acqua,” 1995, bronze, nickel, and resin). See f.t. table.