Enrico Donati

About

Enrico Donati (1909–2008) was an Italian-American surrealist and abstract expressionist painter born in Milan, Italy. He studied economics at the Università degli Studi in Pavia before moving to the United States in 1934, where he attended the New School for Social Research and the Art Students League in New York. Donati became a key figure in the New York Surrealist movement during World War II, earning recognition from André Breton himself, who pronounced him a Surrealist in 1942 after seeing his work. Throughout his six-decade career, Donati continuously evolved his artistic style, moving beyond the amorphous biomorphic forms of early Surrealism to embrace geometric abstraction, action painting, and informalism. He was instrumental in organizing the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme in Paris in 1947 and remained closely associated with the Surrealist movement's leadership, including Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, and Yves Tanguy. Until his death in Manhattan on April 25, 2008, Donati was considered the surviving dean of the Surrealist Movement and a member of the New York School.

Surrealism, Abstract Surrealism, Geometric Abstraction, Informalism, Action Painting