The 2015 Colour Award goes to Valerio Adami.

Valerio Adami’s career is marked by honours and significant milestones. Winner of the Premio Marzotto in 1958, the following year he inaugurated his first solo exhibition at the Galleria del Naviglio in Milan. Between 1961 and 1964, he worked in Italy, London, and Paris. It was the immersion in these vibrant cultural contexts that consolidated his narrative style. In 1967, he created a series of paintings in New York, which were later exhibited at the Venice Biennale. In the following years, Adami confirmed his ability to engage with public spaces through an artistic combination of monumentality and narrative intimacy. In 1985, he created eight stained-glass windows for the new Hôtel de Ville in Vitry-sur-Seine, followed by a major retrospective at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Between 1986 and 1987, he created two panels for the atrium of the Gare d’Austerlitz in Paris. Significant retrospectives were dedicated to him in Madrid in 1991, Siena in 1994, Bochum in 1997, and Buenos Aires in 1998. The most recent solo exhibitions, which included works from the artist’s collection, were held in 2013 in Ravenna, at the Museo d’Arte dellaCittà, and, just concluded in 2024, the exhibition “Valerio Adami: pittore di idee” at Palazzo Reale in Milan. Today, the artist lives between Paris and Lake Maggiore in Italy.

Adami’s works, rich in references to classical culture, philosophy, and literature, are at once modern and visionary. As he stated: “Drawing is like writing a story, and every line is a bridge connecting past, present, and future”. For Adami, drawing is an actual “literary occupation”.

But it is in colour that Adami gives voice to his narrative. “Colour is the voice of painting”, the artist affirms. His colours, clear and without chiaroscuro or modulations, are applied in flat areas that interact with thick black borders. These borders not only define the saturated tones but enhance them, giving the works a vigour and luminosity similar to that of stained glass. Although flat, the colours are never pure: the artist prepares them personally, creating hundreds of different shades. He then uses them based on the emotions he intends to evoke.