(b Rome, 29 June 1927). Italian painter. He began painting shortly after World War II. His first works were influenced by Cubism and show a knowledge of the work of artists in Rome who were at that time engaged in the figurative renewal of Italian art. However, the influence of Futurist works and his acquaintance with the Russian avant-garde and De Stijl led Dorazio to adopt an abstract idiom. In 1947, with Giulio Turcato, Pietro Consagra, Carla Accardi, Ugo Attardi (b 1923), Antonio Sanfilippo (1923–80), Mino Guerrini (b 1927) and Achille Perilli (b 1927), he founded the FORMA group, declaring himself to be a ‘formalist’ and to have the aim of creating ‘objective abstract forms’ in which ‘the form is both the means and the end’. He made frequent visits to France and to the USA, where he exhibited for the first time in 1950 at the Museum of Non-objective Painting in New York. Here he came into contact with the American abstract painters and with action painting, both of which played a key role in helping him perfect his own form of abstraction. The USA became very important to him, and during the 1950s he made several prolonged visits there, returning to teach at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, in 1960 and 1963. The period from 1958 to 1963 was in some ways the high point in Dorazio’s artistic development: during this time he produced his series of ‘textures’ and ‘grids’ (e.g. Colle Maggio , 1962; Stockholm, Mod. Mus.). During the 1960s he was frequently invited to participate in abstract exhibitions such as Monochrome Malerei (1960; Leverkusen, Schloss Morsbroich) and contributed to the founding of the groups Zero and Nul, while in Italy he exhibited at numerous Venice Biennali. He continued teaching in the USA until 1970, when he decided to dedicate himself solely to painting.