Claudio Abate

Art Brokerage: Claudio Abate Italian Artist: b. 1943. Claudio Abate, was born 1943 in Rome, Italy. As as a teenager he showed interest in the world of art and photography. The son of a painter who was friends with De Chirico, in 1955 he started his career as a photographer with Michelangelo Como in Via Margutta. From 1961 to 1963 he worked for Life Magazine as assistant to Eric Lessing, one of the founders of the Magnum photo agency. He actively took part in the sixties scene and his photographs, as well as providing precious testimony, are often the only proof of events of which otherwise we would not have any record. Complex works of environmental art – hard to trace to a single point of view – are portrayed in a single, never celebrative image, in the attempt to capture the relationship between the work, the surroundings and the spectator. After the so-called 'hot years' when he became the photographer/reader of avant-garde contemporary art, he experimented with his own language. This led to his "Contatti con la superficie sensibile", comprising black and white works created through direct contact with light-sensitised photographic paper, presented at the Incontri internazionali d'Arte at Palazzo Taverna in Rome in 1972. In the 1980s he approached colour for the first time, and while retaining his intimate dialogue with the work and the artists, he abandoned loyal descriptions of reality to highlight its mystery. Abate's photos have been displayed in many national and international shows. Listings wanted.