Tancredi Parmeggiani was born in Feltre on the 25th of September in 1927. After he spent his childhood at Belluno (where he attended high school into the Silesians’ college), in 1943 he interrupted classical studies to enter the Academy of Fine Arts of Venice, following the classes of the Free School of nude, held by Armando Pizzinato. During this period he met and became friends with Emilio Vedova. In 1946 he left for Paris where he came to know the vanguards of the first half of the century.
The following year he came back to Italy and he worked and lived between Feltre and Venice; here, in 1949, at the Gallery Sandri, he presented his first personal exhibition, supervised by Virgilio Guidi. In 1950 he moved to Rome, where he started to collaborate with the group Age d’Or and in 1951 he participated in the First Exhibition of the Italian Abstract Art at the Gallery of Modern Art in Rome. Subsequently he returned to Venice, where he met Peggy Guggenheim, who gave him a studio and bought some of his works. In 1952 he received the Graziano Reward for his painting and in the same year, with some other artists, he signed the Spatialist manifesto. In 1952 he exhibited at the Cavallino Gallery in Venice.
In 1953 he was at the Gallery of the Naviglio in Milan, with an introduction by Peggy Guggenheim and Virgilio Guidi and he was also invited to the Italy-France exhibition in Torino, where he exhibited in the room near that of Hans Hartung. In 1954 he participated in Tendances Actuelles with Pollock, Wols, and Mathieu at the Kunsthalle Bern. In 1955 he broke definitely his collaboration with Peggy Guggenheim. In the same year he left for Paris where he met Dubuffet, Asger Jorn, Karel Appel and exhibited on a collective at The Stadler’s Gallery. During the following years he exposed at the Saidenberg Gallery in New York, at the Hannover Gallery of London, at The Selecta Gallery in Rome and he participated to the Carniege International of Pittsburgh. In 1958 he married Tove Dietrichson, a Norwegian painter and from this union a daughter and a son were born. In the spring of 1960 he came back to Milan where he cooperated steadily with the Gallery Ariete. In 1964 he joined the Venice’s Biennial; in the same year, on the 27th of September, he took his own life throwing himself into the Tiber.
