Carlo Lorenzetti was born in 1934 in Rome, where he still lives and works today.
He started showing his work at the end of the fifties. A decade later, he started producing abstract and geometrically inclined sculptures, using metal sheeting, first made of crude iron and then stainless steel: these sheets he first folded, then cut sharply and crossed with bands of colour, revealing an approach of Brancusian inspiration (Vivaldi) and links with Constructivism in his polished surfaces. Lorenzetti used metal sheeting as the plane for inventing forms, on the wall or on the ground, which experienced the third dimension while refuting all its repercussions of solid mass and material weight.
In 1959, he won the young sculpture award assigned by the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome.
His first personal was held in Rome in 1962, by Topazia Alliata. In the same year, G. Caradente invited him to take part in the international Sculpture in the City exhibition, organised in the framework of the Festival of the Two Worlds in Spoleto.
Lorenzetti persisted with an intense degree of exhibition work, also including drawings and graphics, with significant personals and participations in group shows in museums in Italy and other countries: the World Expo in Montreal (1967); the São Paulo Biennale (1967 and 1975); the Mediterranean Biennale in Alexandria (1968); the Rhine-Tiber Sculpture Award at the Cologne Kunstverein (1969); the Venice Biennale (1970, 1972 with a personal room, 1976 and 1986); the Rome Quadriennale (1965, 1973 and 1986); the Krakow Graphic Design Biennale (1972 and 1974); the Ljubljana Graphic Design Exhibition (1973 and 1989); the New Delhi International Contemporary Art Triennale (1975); the Budapest Small Sculpture Biennale (1973 and 1987) etc.
In 1988, Lorenzetti’s work won him the Feltrinelli Award for sculpture, conferred by the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei.
In later years, he also took part in the exhibitions: Italienische Zeichnungen 1945-1987 at the Frankfurt Kunstverein and the Civic Gallery in Modena (1987); The International Contemporary Sculpture Biennale in Matera (1988); Orientamenti dell’arte italiana, Roma 1947-1989 in Moscow and Leningrad (1989); Percorsi ininterrotti dell’arte, in Palazzo Rondanini, Rome (1991), and the XLVI Michetti Award in Francavilla al Mare (1992, where he won the sculpture prize).
In 1955, he was invited to represent Italy at the VI International Osaka Sculpture Triennale (his work was bought by the Museum) and in 1966 he was invited to take part in the VIII Valley of Sculpture, from Rodin to Calder exhibition in the archaeological museum in Aosta.
In addition to the open-air anthological held in the city of Anghiari (1972) and the Gubbio Metal Biennale (1986), he also took part in the Drawing Biennales in the Town Hall of Salò (1986) and in the Civic Gallery of Modena (1992) and the Sculpture Biennales in the Contemporary Art Pavilion in Palazzo Massari, Ferrara, (1996) and in the Castle of Pergine Valsugana (1998). The permanent installation of a large-scale work, Arc-en-ciel, in Brufa di Torgiano is also worthy of note.