Bruno Ceccobelli

He wrote: "I do not want to be a market-fan artist, but to belong to all times, and this is why I believe in a foreseeing art, not just historical or literary or sociological or stylistic. I believe in a symbolic art, capable to offer a message and to pacify the world". In 1971, he first took part in a group exhibition in the Town Hall of Albach, Austria, and, six years later, he had his first solo exhibition at the Alternative Space Gallery in Rome, where he exhibited works of conceptual art. He also participated in two group exhibitions at La Stanza, an independent space self-managed by young artists. In the early 1980s, Ceccobelli and other artists settled in the former Pastificio Cerere, a large abandoned industrial space located in the San Lorenzo quarter in Rome. The group, known as the New Roman School or San Lorenzo Workshop, included Piero Pizzi Cannella, Marco Tirelli, Giuseppe Gallo, Gianni Dessì, Nunzio Di Stefano and Domenico Bianchi. The Italian art critic Achille Bonito Oliva wrote that these artists were "all bearers of individual poetics and all streams towards a common aesthetic mentality and a moral vision of art". In the following years, he had a number of international exhibitions: in 1979, at the Festival of Italian Culture in Belgrade and, subsequently, group exhibitions in France, Germany, and Croatia. At Yvon Lambert in Paris he exhibited Morpheus.

The 1990s started with exhibitions in Germany, Austria, Canada and Italy. In 1994, he was invited to give a training course at the École Nationale des Beaux-Artes in Senegal, an experience that would leave a deep influence on his life.

In 1999, Arturo Schwarz was the curator of Ceccobelli's exhibition "Trascorsi d’Asfalto" at the Guastalla Centro Arte Gallery (Livorno), and in the same year, he exhibited in Bilbao (Luis Borgus). During the Jubilee Year (2000), he was entrusted with the realisation of the huge portals in iron corten and bronze for the Cathedral of Terni, in Italy. In 2002, Ceccobelli celebrated at the B.M.B. Gallery his twenty years of exhibitions in Dutch Galleries. The next year, he published the book Color Bellezza, a collection of his essays expressing his longing for a forthcoming aesthetic society. Also, in 2005, he held his important solo-exhibition "Classico Eclettico" at the Archaeological Museum of Villa Adriana in Tivoli (Roma). In 2004, Ceccobelli realised the mosaic "Eternity is the true healer" in Gibellina (Sicily) and the following year the Guastalla Gallery in Livorno presented the anthological exhibition "Big Works 1989-2005". In the same year, he wrote the book Tempo senza tempo della pittura, which is a collection of comparisons about yesterday's and today's artists, an opportunity to theorise his aesthetic arguments. In 2005, he was appointed as Director of the Academy of Fine Arts "Pietro Vannucci" of Perugia, Italy. In 2006, Ceccobelli presented a series of marble sculptures in Verona and in Pietrasanta at the gallery Spirale Arte, and participated in the important group exhibition "San Lorenzo" at Villa Medici (Roma). Among the most recent exhibitions to be noted are "Longa Marcia post-temporale" (Volume! Roma 2007), "Invasi" (Fondazione Pastificio Cerere, Roma), "Attici unici" (Attico of Fabio Sargentini, Roma 2009), and the impressive "Natalis in Urbe" (Basilica di Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, Roma 2009). Also in 2009, the Museum of Contemporary Art (MaRT) of Rovereto presented the first retrospective exhibition dedicated to