Widely regarded as Rome's first street artist, Delle Chiaie spent three decades exhibiting outdoors between the Ara Pacis and the Mausoleum of Augustus.Fausto Delle Chiaie, a pioneering Italian artist who transformed Rome's pavements into an open-air museum, died in the city on Saturday at the age of 82.Born in Rome on 23 January 1944, he trained at the Scuola Libera del Nudo at the city's Accademia di Belle Arti before developing a highly personal artistic practice that took him out of galleries and onto the streets. A museum without walls From 1987, Delle Chiaie began laying out hundreds of works directly on the ground or against low walls on the Pincio hill, and from 1989 his work found a lasting home on the pavement in the stretch between the Ara Pacis and the Mausoleum of Augustus. There he built an open, free museum that he curated in person almost daily for decades, greeting tourists, passers-by, intellectuals and the simply curious. His theoretical framework, the 1986 Manifesto Infrazionista, introduced the concept of "infra-azione" - placing works in public space and then withdrawing, leaving them to exist independently of the artist. The Treccani encyclopaedia later described his interventions as isolated instances of street art "ante litteram" in 1980s Rome. Critic Achille Bonito Oliva credited him with creating what he called "a democracy of looking". Art from discarded materials Delle Chiaie's works were built from cigarette butts, plastic fragments, old cardboard, dried leaves and other refuse, each transformed through an ironic title or handwritten caption. Among his best-known gestures were signing Rome's ancient monuments as if they were his own works, and selling tins of "Rome's air". His practice, filtered through a distinctly Roman, wry irony, drew on Dadaism, pop art and Arte Povera while deliberately keeping its distance from the art market. Recognition amid hardship His work was shown in Italy and abroad, and featured in institutional exhibitions including a project at Rome's MACRO museum in 2018. His life was also the subject of several documentaries and two televised portraits by journalist Domenico Iannacone. Despite this recognition, Delle Chiaie lived for decades in financial hardship, relying on donations from visitors. A 2021 petition backed by writer Pino Giannini gathered more than 27,000 signatures calling for him to receive support under the Legge Bacchelli, a state fund for distinguished citizens in economic difficulty; the benefit was granted by the government in July 2023. Photo Wikipedia

Fausto Delle Chiaie, a pioneering Italian artist who transformed Rome's pavements into an open-air museum, died in the city on Saturday at the age of 82. Born in Rome on 23 January 1944, he trained at the Scuola Libera del Nudo at the city's Accademia di Belle Arti before developing a highly personal artistic practice that took him out of galleries and onto the streets. From 1987, Delle Chiaie began laying out hundreds of works directly on the ground or against low walls on the Pincio hill, and from 1989 his work found a lasting home on the pavement in the stretch between the Ara Pacis and the Mausoleum of Augustus. There he built  that he curated in person almost daily for decades, greeting tourists, passers-by, intellectuals and the simply curious. His theoretical framework, the 1986 Manifesto Infrazionista, introduced the concept of "infra-azione" - placing works in public space and then withdrawing, leaving them to exist independently of the artist. The Treccani encyclopaedia later described his interventions as isolated instances of street art "ante litteram" in 1980s Rome. Critic Achille Bonito Oliva credited him with creating what he called "a democracy of looking". Delle Chiaie's works were built from cigarette butts, plastic fragments, old cardboard, dried leaves and other refuse, each transformed through an ironic title or handwritten caption. Among his best-known gestures were signing Rome's ancient monuments as if they were his own works, and selling tins of "Rome's air". His practice, filtered through a distinctly Roman, wry irony, drew on Dadaism, pop art and Arte Povera while deliberately keeping its distance from the art market. His work was shown in Italy and abroad, and featured in institutional exhibitions including a project at Rome's MACRO museum in 2018. His life was also the subject of several documentaries and two televised portraits by journalist Domenico Iannacone. Despite this recognition, Delle Chiaie lived for decades in financial hardship, relying on donations from visitors. A 2021 petition backed by writer Pino Giannini gathered more than 27,000 signatures calling for him to receive support under the Legge Bacchelli, a state fund for distinguished citizens in economic difficulty; the benefit was granted by the government in July 2023. Photo Wikipedia