“In all these years, my interest in space has remained predominant to the point of verging on architecture. It is a political interest, understood as an attempt to show something necessary for survival itself, a kind of battle in favour of existence” Alfredo Pirri
Alfredo Pirri’s work, which lies on the borderline between painting and sculpture, architecture and installation, has been attracting the attention of the international public since the mid-1980s. Matter, volume, colour and space are the main tools of his poetics. The originality of his work lies in the use of painting as a vehicle for light and light as an architectural and spatial element. Space becomes a landscape inhabited by sculptures in which the pictorial surface creates presences of light and shadow. Alfredo Pirri’s art creates a harmonious confrontation with architecture and constantly tends towards the creation of an archetypal place, an inhabitable space and at the same time a place of public function.
Alfredo Pirri (Cosenza, 1957) lives and works in Rome. He has shown his work in numerous national and international exhibitions, including: Castello Maniace, Siracusa (2021); Museo Nazionale Romano - Palazzo Altemps, Rome (2018); MACRO, Rome (2017); Museo Novecento, Florence (2015); London Design Festival, London, UK (2015); GNAM - Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome (2013); Palazzo Te, Mantua (2013); Project Biennial D-0 ARK Underground Konjic, Bosnia Herzegovina (2013), where his installation Passi is on permanent display; Museo Archeologico Nazionale Reggio Calabria with the permanent work Piazza (2011); Centro Arti Visive Pescheria, Pesaro (2007); Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris, France (2006); Biennale dell’Avana, Cuba (2001); Accademia di Francia - Villa Medici, Rome (2000); MoMa PS1, New York, USA (1999); Walter Gropius Bau, Berlin, Germany (1992). In 1988 he participated in the 43rd Venice Biennale. In 2023 Alfredo Pirri has received the Laurea Honoris Causa in “Architettura – Progettazione Architettonica” from Roma Tre University in Rome, Italy.
www.alfredopirri.com