Amadeo Luciano Lorenzato (1900, Belo Horizonte, Brazil – 1995, Belo Horizonte, Brazil) developed a singular and independent practice, largely outside established artistic movements. Born to Italian immigrant parents, he moved to Italy in 1920 and spent nearly three decades working across Europe in mural painting and restoration. He briefly attended the Reale Accademia delle Arti in Vicenza in 1925 but remained predominantly self-taught.
During his extended period in Europe, Lorenzato was exposed to a wide range of artistic traditions from Italian Renaissance painting to modern European artists such as Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. He returned permanently to Belo Horizonte in 1948. After a leg injury in 1956, he dedicated himself fully to painting, establishing a consistent and autonomous body of work grounded in direct observation of his surroundings. His compositions focus primarily on urban views and everyday scenes from his immediate environment.
Lorenzato produced his own pigments and employed unconventional tools including combs and forks, to build dense and tactile compositions. Despite his awareness of both European modernism and Brazilian Concrete Art, he remained independent from these movements and created a personal visual system based on repetition and variation.
His exhibition history began relatively late with his first group exhibitions in Belo Horizonte in 1965, followed by his first solo exhibition in 1967 at the Minas Tênis Clube. He subsequently exhibited in institutional contexts in Brazil, including a retrospective at the Museu de Arte da Pampulha in 1995. In 1971, he represented Brazil at the 3rd Triennale of Bratislava, marking his participation in an international exhibition context.
Lorenzato’s work is held in major public collections in Brazil and internationally, including the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP), the Pinacoteca de São Paulo, the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco and the Museu de Arte da Pampulha, as well as institutional collections such as Fundação Clóvis Salgado and Universidade Federal de Viçosa. His work has gained increasing institutional and market recognition in recent decades, positioning him as a significant figure within 20th-century Brazilian painting.