 | Matthew Spender was born in London in 1945 and was trained in the courses of Modern History at Oxford University, after approaching the study of art at the Slade School of Art in London.
In 1967 he married Maro Gorky, daughter of the painter Arshile Gorky Armenian-American, and she moved to Italy in 1968, choosing either to live in a charming farmhouse in the Tuscan countryside of the Chianti region, in the province of Siena, in which they continue them to take their respective artistic activity. Spender was first interested in painting and carried out in parallel a significant exhibitions, with solo exhibitions in Italy, Germany and France, arriving in 1989 to be hosted in the prestigious Berkeley Square Gallery, London. In Italy, this period of success with critics and the public has reached its climax with the Michetti Prize for painting, awarded in 1991 in Francavilla al Mare. From that year on, however, Spender has began to turn his attention to sculpture, focusing on natural materials such as wood, marble and terracotta. He met with immediate favor of many collectors, including emerging in particular the names of the painter Francis Bacon and director Bernardo Bertolucci, who chose forty-seven terracotta sculptures, created by the early nineties, the film "I Stealing Beauty "in 1996. Among its main exhibitions are to remember the show The Turn of Carrara in Eighty Days, built in 2000 in the Church of the Intercession of Carrara and the complete retrospective of his sculptures, which was held in 2001 in the Medieval Museum of Sant ' Augustine in Genoa. Your latest important to also mention "The sacredness in everyday life", held in Fiesole in 2006, the exhibition at the Festival "Future Present" in Rovereto in May 2007 at the invitation of Bernardo Bertolucci, and "Archaeology of the Present"in 2008, housed in the Sale Viscontee charming courtyards and the Castello Sforzesco in Milan. As a writer, he published the book "In Tuscany". Reflections of an English artist on art, uses, customs and oddities of Italians among whom he lives, in the original edition in London by Penguin in 1992 and translated into Italian by Elvira side at Barbes in Florence 2008. Among his awards, he received the post of Professor in the painting class of the Academy of Fine Arts of Drawing in Florence and the title of Honorary Professor of the Academy of Fine Arts in Carrara, in the class of sculpture. |
