Michael Venezia

In his practice, Michael Venezia acknowledges the material nature of color, exploring it through the juxtaposition of color strips.

Biography of Michael Venezia

Michael Venezia was born in 1935 in Brooklyn, New York. He attended the Art Students League in New York, studied with Peter Busa at State University College of New York in Buffalo, and received an MFA in painting and art history from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

He has been refining simplified paintings since the 1960s, drawing inspiration from Abstract Expressionism and coinciding with the emergence of Minimal Art.

The artist has showcased his works in numerous solo and group exhibitions worldwide. Recent solo shows include "Compilations" at Palazzo Collicola in Spoleto (2023), "The Future Covers the Past" at Häusler Contemporary in Zurich (2022), "Swerves" at Häusler Contemporary Munich (2019), "Michael Venezia – Paintings" at Galerie Greta Meert in Brussels, and many more.

Michael Venezia's paintings have been featured in group exhibitions held at various galleries and museums around the world, including PEAC Museum in Freiburg im Breisgau, the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, the National Academy Museum in New York, Galerie Rolf Ricke in Cologne, Sperone Westwater in New York, Margarete Roeder Gallery in New York, Zuni Gallery in Buffalo, among others. 

Currently, the artist lives and works in New York. 

Michael Venezia's Art Style

Michael Venezia is widely recognized for his significant contribution to the revitalization of painting during the 1960s. Alongside artist colleagues like Dan Flavin, Robert Ryman, and Sol LeWitt, Venezia shared the belief that Abstract Expressionism had become mired in routine and narcissism, tendencies they sought to transcend.

In the late 1960s, Venezia embraced the spray-paint gun as a means to depart from the gestural and handcrafted quality of brushstrokes. Another pivotal development was the reduction of the picture plane to a long, narrow wooden bar. To this day, Venezia remains loyal to this format, continually exploring new techniques and combinations of bars to achieve fresh and surprising painterly effects.

Michael Venezia's enduring fascination with historical paint application methods, coupled with his constant exploration of various painting techniques, results in highly distinctive artworks that adhere to a minimalist ethos of reduction while drawing from diverse pictorial traditions. 

Venezia approaches painting as a means to evoke a visual sensation—a perceptual experience rather than a purely conceptual one. By regarding painting as both an object and an action, he endeavors to avoid preconceiving the final outcome. Instead, he engages in processes and maneuvers from which the painting emerges, existing in the present as a tangible physical entity.