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On the occasion of the XV Florence Biennale 2025, Oliviero Leonardi will receive the “Lorenzo il Magnifico” Lifetime Achievement Award from the President in memoriam.

Oliviero Leonardi (1921 - 2019) was an Italian painter, sculptor, enamelist and ceramicist based in Rome and later in France. He was largely recognized in the 1970/80s as one of the leaders in painting with experimental materials on steel plates baked in ovens at high fire (at 900 degrees Celsius). He was technically using an innovative form of vitreous enamel painting as artistic medium, using his own mixtures of oxides and materials. He looked into unraveling “memories of vanished entities of immemorial times”.
His works were studied by important art historians and critics, including Giulio Carlo Argan and Elio Mercuri, and many international experts on Modern or Early Modern art, such as Gustav René Hocke. He founded the Romacrea art school welcoming students in Rome to experiment on new approaches. He had more than 25 solo and collective exhibitions in major art galleries in Italy, France, Spain, Monaco, Germany and Luxembourg. His works were also exhibited at the Maschio Angioino, the Centro di Cultura Italiana, the Saarland Museum, the Van Gogh House and the Limoges Biennale, and commissioned for public spaces including the metro in the city of Rome.