Biography

Tony Priolo, painter, graphic and water-painting expert, miniaturist and sculptor, founder of "UL" art, officially enters the world of art in Christmas 1975 at the Roman exhibition "Un manifesto per via Condotti" where he was appreciated by the most representative Italian and foreign critics.

Tony Priolo, born in Lametia Terme (Cz) in 1925, learns from his father (drawer and portraitist), the first notions about drawing. In 1938-39 he attends a professional high school, then he follows classical studies while his passion for art appears and becomes stronger with time, among periods of difficulities and crises. In 1946 he is in Rome where he visits studios and galleries and also the national library where he studies Michelangelo Raffaello, Giorgione, Leonardo, Tiziano, and Van gogh Cezanne, Renoir..

Then, periods of meditation and waiting follow, together with moments of enthusiasm to begin pencil and Indian ink drawing and oil painting representing landscapes, still-life and compositions in their first and immediate expression. In 1968-69 he frequents the Roman artistic circles around Via Margutta; here he shows his first works on the bare walls together with other artists, and here his artistic formation comes to maturity. He meets the greatest artists of that period De Chirico, Cagli, Guttuso, and art gallery managers like Russo of Piazza di Spagna.

He founds a circle of avant-gard artists called "Gruppo marguttiano dei sette", and contacts European and American associations of artists for cultural exchanges. But he realizes soon that his way through arts is "lonely", for his intuition and creativity allow him to try different techniques and to personally develop his art.

He begins to pay a particular attention to what happens around him: the Italian years of violence and terrorism, the "Brigate Rosse" and the murder of the statesman Aldo Moro, and what the rest of the world concerns, the increasing social injustice, abuses, drugs, nuclear pollution etc...

Priolo realizes the historical-social work "Aldo Moro in the legend" in 305 miniatures similar to stamps in b/w, divided into 33 tables with images re-evoking the tragic event. Other facts happen: Emanuela Orlandi's kidnapping, the Chernobyl explosion, the murder of the Swedish premier Olof Palme.

Priolo feels the need to free the mankind from the negative aspects of modern society, to give a message of peace, of social justice and freedom. So he launches the "Manifesto of existential trans-futurism" from Montopoli Sabina (Ri) in March 1987, spead by ANSA as literary historical document on March 23.

Priolo takes part to personnel and collective exhibitions: Venice, Ferrara, Milan, Bologna, Florence, Naples, Messina Palermo, Bari, Rome (Palazzo Esposizioni), and international art fairs: Geneva, Basel, Madrid, Paris, New York. He also takes part to exhibitions of Sacred Art. In 1986-87 he is in the group of painters "from Italy to los Angeles". From June 1987 until January 1988, he's present at the Mundial Artistique Art-Vie in Paris. In 1991 he presents the document of Second Romanticism in Rieti.

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