Umberto Verdirosi
Born in Trino (Italy) in 1935.
Italian · Symbolist and narrative figuration · art conceived as a message and shaped by theatrical experience.
Umberto Verdirosi is an Italian artist whose practice encompasses painting, sculpture, theatre and poetry. Raised in a family of actors and educated in the classical tradition, he began his career on the stage, appearing with several companies before establishing his own troupe and tent theatre, which he directed until 1968.
After moving to Rome, he increasingly concentrated on painting and sculpture, while also working in watercolour and writing. Self-taught in the visual arts, he has consistently asserted an independent position and describes his approach through the phrase “art conceived as a message.”
His theatrical experience remains central to the narrative structure of his paintings. Curtains, masks, figures in motion and compositions arranged like stage scenes give visual form to questions of identity, time, power and consciousness. His declared symbolism also relies on recurring motifs, particularly the red scarf, conceived as a dynamic seal within the composition.
Verdirosi has maintained a sustained dialogue between word and image. He illustrated Shakespeare’s sonnets for a volume introduced by Diego Fabbri and published several books in which poetry, reflections on art and painted cycles complement one another.
In 2013, the Province of Sondrio hosted his solo exhibition L’arte intesa come messaggio and acquired the painting Politici a confronto for its public inventory. In 2017, an exhibition at the Accademia di Romania in Rome brought together seventy oil paintings and several sculptures. The painting Voyage sans retour extends this symbolic dramaturgy among the works presented by Swiss Art Gallery in the present corpus.
The works by Umberto Verdirosi presented by Swiss Art Gallery extend this artistic journey and take their place naturally within this corpus.
