Italian painter and décollagist. He studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Naples and, in 1945, moved to Rome where he began painting along Expressionist lines. In 1948, he adopted a geometrical abstract idiom which he finally rejected, in 1952, on his return to Italy after having studied in the United States for a year. Around 1954, he gave up painting for a new technique, décollage, which often included films and posters. In 1955, he took part in the exhibition, Esposizione d'arte attuale that led to his being considered a neo-dadaist. In the same year, he had a one-man show at the Galleria del Naviglio in Milan, which was followed by others in London, Venice and Zurich. In 1961, he was invited to join the group Nouveau Réalisme, which included other décollage artists. After 1960, he focused on poster images, especially those advertising consumer goods or the cinema, which introduced a theme very close to American and British Pop Art of the same period. In 1964, he settled in Paris and produced what he called reportages, photographs projected on a canvas sensitised with photographic emulsion. In the 80s, he returned to décollage, generally combining posters slashed with paint or completely blotting them out with glued bits of paper. He can be considered one of the greatest exponents of Nouveau Réalisme.
