Vita

Born in Lodi in 1953, Roberto Fereno has attended the high school in Bergamo and then moved to I.U.A.V. University of Venice to become architect in 1977.

For the next two years, as a researcher at I.U.A.V.University, Roberto was committed to travel to Spain, Portugal, UK and US for study. Meanwhile his passion for music and cinema grew and became part of his culture. From 1980 to 1986 he has been living in Milan, working in the team of one of his best friend, the architect Aldo Rossi, and at Harper’s Bazaar editing. He starts his temporary photographer’s career by making advertising pictures for fashion,  for main brands of Italian furniture industry and design as well as editing pictures and front pages in Gran Bazaar magazine and editing pictures in Casa Vogue magazine. Some of his pictures were published on New York Times newspaper and Construcción de la Ciudad journal. In 1980 he was the photographer for the Bassetti calendar. He has designed a collection of home lamps for the Venetian company VeArt, which included “Jim” (1982), for the company Cast Anna Nora he has created the bed “Amore&Ginnastica” in 1990 and in 1995 designed and produced by his own a solid silver chandelier “Panigarola” , i.e. firefly. All those professional experiences met in painting. Thoughts and knowledge on architecture, photography, music, cinema merge into a painting culture which has his roots in Italian Renaissance and goes through the Italian art of twentieth century to finally meet the American and, mainly, the English contemporary art. Thus resulting in a very special and individual research that makes Roberto Freno unique in the contemporary art scenery. According to Manlio Brusatin, Freno’s works of art build up a kind of habitat, of “ citta’ analoga”*, in a poetic experienced world that is an ideal bridge from fifteenth to twentieth century.

In 2001 Roberto Freno is in London for the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts as their chief Peter Blake has chosen his painting “Tomorrow is a Holiday” for the show.

His works belong to private collections in Bergamo, Brescia, Milano, Modena, Rimini, Roma, Munich (D), Tolouse (F) and to public galleries in Brescia  (1000Miglia Museum) and Bergamo (Palazzo della Provincia).

He lives and works in Bergamo.