Biography

Beginnings and training

1941Cesare Cesarini is born in Bologna, where he lives and works. He trains at the city's State Art Institute.

1962He receives the acquisition prize for black-and-white work at the «Mostra d'autunno» in the Salone del Trecento of Palazzo Re Enzo, with a special mention by Francesco Arcangeli — a decisive early endorsement. He shows at the same exhibition the following year and at «Arte contemporanea in Emilia e Romagna» at Bologna's Museo Civico until 1966. From 1967 to 1970 he devotes himself to graphic design, drawing for Mulhouse.

The Seventies: the informel and Rimbaud

1973–75He returns to the public eye with the «Lotte Socialiste per il Progresso e la Pace» acquisition prize, followed by solo shows at the Circolo della Stampa in Bologna, reviewed by Giorgio Ruggeri, and at Studio 15 in Milan, presented by Lino Cavallari: “Cesarini has never disowned his abstract-informel origins, nor yielded to inadequate experimentalism.” At Galleria Sanvitale, Ruggeri acknowledges “severe, profound tonal relations revealing maturity of thought, command and deep feeling.”

1979He pays homage to the poetic world of Arthur Rimbaud with a solo exhibition at the Italo-French Cultural Association in Bologna: material works and collages after the Illuminations and Une saison en enfer. In September he is invited to the Premio Lubiam in Sabbioneta, where he receives the Silver Virgil.

The Eighties: the scene of the crime

1981At the John Hopkins Italo-American Cultural Association in Bologna he stages «Il tempo degli assassini», after Henry Miller's text devoted to Rimbaud.

1983In Palazzo Bolognini, seat of the British Institute, he opens «La scena del delitto», a scenic-pictorial environment on the Gothic novel and new horror; the opening hosts a debate with Umberto Eco, Giovanna Franci and Guido Fink, who signs the catalogue essay.

1984–88His works enter public and private collections in Italy and the United States; from 1984 he is on permanent display at Boston University. He designs posters and graphic identities for the Academy of Sciences and the University of Bologna — from «The Sublime: Creation and Catastrophe in Poetry» to the Alma Mater's ninth centenary — alongside book covers and series. In 1986 his solo show at Montrasio Arte in Monza is reviewed in «la Repubblica»: “Rimbaud turned into colour in the delicate canvases of the airy Cesarini” (Luisa Somaini).

1989His solo exhibition at Biloba Studio in Bologna, presented by Dario Trento, pairs recent works with a retrospective of the Sixties and Seventies: “A love of graffiti and a touch of irony,” runs Carlo Gullotta's headline in «la Repubblica»; for Roberto Vitali “the discourse on space grows concentrated and rarefied, to the point of a hushed refinement.”

From the Nineties: art, fashion, the city

1991He begins contributing as an illustrator to the daily «la Repubblica». In 1995 he designs the decoration of a city bus for the A.N.T. of Bologna.

2000At Palazzo Isolani he inaugurates «Arte e Moda: incroci e contaminazioni», on the occasion of the round table with Danilo Eccher, Giovanna Franci, Roberto Grandi and Guido Vergani, within the «Chic Thrills» seminar of the School of Advanced Humanistic Studies directed by Umberto Eco.

2001At the Italian Cultural Institute in Stockholm, the solo exhibition «The Wings of Fashion» — large-scale canvases supported by the Italian Embassy — accompanies the debate «Art, Fashion and Design: Cross-Fertilizations and Contamination».

2003At the Italian Cultural Institute in Los Angeles he presents «Vulnerable White Hangers», concluding the programme «Art and Fashion Design: Cross-Fertilization».

2009At the Urban Center in Salaborsa, Bologna, he inaugurates «Segni della Memoria» (Signs of Memory): the painterly reworking of graffiti and of the traces left on city walls, a project of the Laboratorio di Ricerca sulle Città with the Alma Mater Studiorum and the Italo-British Cultural Association, followed by the round table «Signs and sounds: street culture and street music».