Umberto Manzo

Bio

Umberto Manzo (born in Naples, 1960) lives and works between Naples and Rotondi.
In 1983, he graduated in scenography from Naples’s Accademia di Belle Arti.
His first exhibition experiences date back to the early 1980s.
During his formative years, along with his photographic research, the artist began his first experiments in informal painting.
In 1987, with a solo exhibition, he began
his collaboration with the Trisorio gallery, which would present his work at numerous international art fairs. In 1988, at the Centro Prossemico di Cultura, the artist exhibited
a work with different formal and conceptual characteristics, initiating a new experiment. His first works with paper, which would become the most recognisable feature of his production, date back to 1992. These new works were exhibited for the first time that same year in a solo show at the Galleria Piano Nobile (in Perugia).
In the 1990s, his artistic production was characterised by the creation of display cases, frames with glass that make up polyptychs, layered paper and photographic emulsions (Galleria Manuela Allegrini, Brescia 1994; Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Republic of San Marino 1995; Quadriennale, Rome 1996). During the same period, he also participated in the various editions of the Art Basel, Arco and Art Cologne art fairs, exhibiting with Studio Trisorio.

In 1999, at his solo exhibition at the Galleria dello Scudo in Verona, he presented a new phase of his research, which had begun the previous year.
In 2000, three of his works were installed
in the Stazione Quattro Giornate station
on Line 1 of the Naples Metro, while in 2003, Castel dell’Ovo hosted an important retrospective exhibition of his work.
In 2005, the artist presented some new works at Studio Trisorio, in which he revisited the idea of painting.

In 2007, he had his first solo exhibition at the Xavier Fiol Gallery in Palma de Mallorca, followed by another in 2011. Also in Palma, in 2012 he participated in the Expanded Drawing exhibition, curated by Pilar Ribald Simo, held at Casal Solleric. In 2017, the artist created, together with children from Naples’s Quartieri Spagnoli, a large work that would then be permanently installed inside the city’s Foqus foundation. In 2020, he held his first solo exhibition in Madrid at the new site of the Galleria Xavier Fiol. In 2021, he participated in the exhibition Utopia Distopia: il mito
del progresso partendo dal Sud at the Madre Museum in Naples, curated by Kathryn Weir, and in 2022, in the exhibition Neighborhood, at the Museo Arcos in Benevento.
In 2023, two solo exhibitions were held at Studio Trisorio in Naples, Riviera di Chiaia and Via Carlo Poerio. That same year, he was invited at the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Madrid, in the exhibition Cuerpos y paisajes. meridianos, where he exhibited several large-scale works in a large hall. Also in 2023, one of his works was exhibited at the group exhibition Italian Contemporary Art and Artists on the Silk Road, at the Inside-Out Art Museum, Beijing, Art Museum of the Sichuan Fine Art Institute, Chongqing and Xi’an Art Museum, Xi’an, a travelling exhibition that started in 2021 in Ukraine, then Turkey, Georgia and Uzbekistan.
In 2018, one of Manzo’s works became part of the contemporary art collection of the Museo Capodimonte, another was donated to the Museo Madre in Naples, and a third was exhibited in the collection at the Museo del Novecento, Castel Sant’Elmo, Naples.