Claudio Verna was born in Guardiagrele, in the province of Chieti, on 24 September 1937. When he was five years old, the family moved to Foligno, in Umbria. After graduating from science high school, in 1956 he moved to Florence where he earned a degree in politacal science at the University of Florence, writing his dissertation on The Figurative Arts in Industrial Civilization in 1961. Immediately afterwards he moved to Rome, where he lives. For several years, even though painting intensly, he chose not to exhibit in order to define, in total autonomy, the reasons and tools of his begin an artist. In 1967 he began showing once again. It is the period of the Analytical Painting, focused on reflection on macking art today and on the relationship with modern tradition. In the mid-1970s he slowly regained complete freedom of expression, after a certain asperity tied to the period of Analytical Painting. As always, colour is the absolute protagonist of his worrk, which “is now articulated between the polarity of extreme rigorousness and intense emotional abadon”. After his debut at the Galleria Numero in Florence in 1960, he set up over one hundred exhibitions in Italy and abroad among which: Biennale in Venice (1970 and 1980), the anthological shows in the mueseums of Gibellina (1988), Spoleto (1994), Ferrara (1997), Conegliano (1998), Treviso (2000), L’Aquila (2007) and in the Mudima Fondation Fondazione Mudima in Milan (2012). At the same time Claudio Verna take part in collective shows and international exhibitions in Dϋsseldorf, London, Philadelphia, Copenhagen, Rotterdam, Stoccolma, Darmstadt, Colonia, Mosca, Leningrado, Grenoble, Nizza, Praga, Buenos Aires, San Paolo, Rio de Janeiro getting different awards. In June, the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei awarded Verna the 2008 Antonio Feltrinelli prize for painting. He was nominated by the Accademia di San Luca. The Catalog Raisonné of his work was published by Volker W. Feierabend and Marco Meneguzzo, Silvana Editoriale (MI), in 2010.
