Cesare Pietroiusti

Cesare Pietroiusti was born in Rome in 1955. He is a visual artist, founder and coordinator of many research centres, projects and art conferences. Since 1977 he has exhibited in private and public spaces in Italy and abroad.

Trained as a psychiatrist, Pietroiusti has always shown a specific interest in paradoxical or seemingly unreasonable situations, minor gestures of everyday life that are commonly considered too insignificant to become grounds for analysis or representation.

Since 2004, he has freely distributed tens of thousands of drawings he has produced and signed, sold stories, swallowed banknotes at the end of an auction and then returned them to their rightful owner after evacuation, opened shops in which the goods for sale are banknotes and the currency with which they can be purchased is the buyer’s gaze, and staged exhibitions in which works are sold not in exchange for money but for the ideas or proposals of visitors.

Since 1977 Pietroiusti has held both solo and group exhibitions in international museums and galleries including the Serpentine Gallery, London in 1992; the Louisiana Museum in 1996; the Venice Biennale in 1990, 1999, 2003; the Tirana Biennale in 2005; Performa 07 in New York in 2007; the Athens Biennale in 2009; Tallinn Art Hall in 2016. Some of the solo projects have been held at Jartrakor, Rome; Studio Casoli, Milan; Galleria Alice, Rome; Galleria Primo Piano, Rome; Ikon Gallery, Birmingham; MaMbo, Bologna; Galleria Franco Sofantino, Turin; Wilkinson Gallery, London.