24 Facts About Ugo Rondinone

Ugo Rondinone was born on November 30,1964 and is a Swiss-born contemporary artist.

Ugo Rondinone was born in 1965 to Italian parents Benito and Eufemia Rondinone in the resort town of Brunnen, Switzerland.

Ugo Rondinone's father was born in Matera, Italy, an ancient city built into limestone cliffs and the site of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ and Pier Paolo Pasolini's The Gospel According to St Matthew, both of which cement its status as a venerated religious site.

Benito Ugo Rondinone was a mason who built stone walls by hand.

Ugo Rondinone's father's upbringing has contributed greatly to Rondinone's work, influencing his extensive body of work in stone as well as his interest in southern Italy's olive trees.

In Brunnen, Ugo Rondinone grew up trilingual, speaking French, Italian, and German.

Ugo Rondinone moved to Zurich in 1983 to become the assistant to Hermann Nitsch and studied at the Hochschule fur angewandte Kunst in Wien, from 1986 to 1990, where he studied with the artist Bruno Gironcoli.

Ugo Rondinone attended Vienna's Academy of Applied Art, studying under Ernst Caramelle.

In 1985 while in school, Ugo Rondinone met fellow student Eva Presenhuber, who would become his art dealer in Zurich and his nominal wife.

In 1997, Ugo Rondinone was accepted into MoMA PS1's International Studio Program and moved to New York City, where he continues to live and work.

Ugo Rondinone's paintings are noted for their brightly colored, concentric rings of target-shapes; and strictly black and white landscapes of gnarled trees.

Since 1997, Ugo Rondinone has included the practice of making signs in his varied oeuvre; he takes phrases from pop songs and everyday exclamations and makes them into rainbow-hued, neon-lit sculptures, including Hell, Yes.

Ugo Rondinone later created a series that includes bronze-cast birds, horses and fish.

Walls, windows and doors are motifs that for Ugo Rondinone can represent a threshold, a passageway.

An equal number have experienced Seven Magic Mountains, an installation of stone pillars painted in rich, vibrant colors that Ugo Rondinone set in the Nevada desert outside of Las Vegas, and co-presented by the Art Production Fund and the Nevada Museum of Art.

Ugo Rondinone's first address in New York was a former Lower East Side ballroom at 2nd Street and Avenue B, where he lived and worked until 2003, when he bought a loft on Broadway in the East Village.

Today it is the Presenhuber Gallery's satellite in New York, but Ugo Rondinone maintains an exhibition program for new work by other artists in its display window.

Five years later in 2012, Ugo Rondinone curated The Spirit Level at Gladstone Gallery, New York, this time to celebrate Giorno's 75th birthday.

Ugo Rondinone spent four years curating this exhibition, which contained works by and about Giorno.

Ugo Rondinone owns an extensive art collection with at least 200 pieces.

Ugo Rondinone included works from Lucas' Penetralia series in The Spirit Level at Gladstone Gallery in 2012.

Since this 1989 initiation, Ugo Rondinone has staged at least one exhibition, often many more, in different parts of the world each year.

The title of the exhibition was later borrowed for his 1997 work CRY ME A RIVER, the first of his iconic neon signs, and an example of Ugo Rondinone's frequent repurposing of titles across exhibitions, works, and poems.

Ugo Rondinone is represented by Esther Schipper, Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Sadie Coles HQ, Galerie Kamel Mennour, Kukje Gallery, Krobath, and Gladstone Gallery.