Corrado Lorenzo was born in Arnesano and lives in Novoli, in the province of Lecce. After completing his classical studies and graduating in Medicine, he took an interest in research art and in particular in behavioural and environmental art.

In 1968 he created Segni sulla sabbia, Formazioni artificiali (Signs on the Sand, Artificial Formations), his work on the natural environment (micro reversible and temporary) which Gillo Dorfles referred to as “very close to those operations which were later created by Richard Long and many other North American artists”.

Recalling P. Marino, Ilderosa Laudisa opened the introduction to the 1995 exhibition at Castello Carlo V with the lapidary statement: “Lorenzo is one of the foremost and most capable conceptual artists of Salento”. As from 1968, he turned to Land Art and Conceptual Art.

In 1971 he started a Textiles Study to rescue popular cultural values, and carried out cognitive research into Art and the Environment that paved the way for the exhibition (1990) at L’Osanna in Nardò, entitled “Natura” .

In 1979 he set up the Associazione Culturale Piccolo Museo in Lecce, where he created an International Archive of Contemporary Art and organised exhibitions of works by Joseph Beuys, Fontana, Boetti, Schifano, Maraniello, Polke, Rotella and others.

With the contribution of artists from around the world, in 1979 he continued the Land Throughout the World operation, of which Joseph Beuys was a part. In 1980 the artist showed I Calchi (reliefs of shapes found in nature) at Art Basel, Expoarte, and at Fondazione Carlo Levi in Matera. Then came works in papier maché and terracotta in which the subject of nature and Corrado Lorenzo’s concept of “art as a means of knowledge” is approached as a dyad of mathematics and nature, order and chance.

In 1981 he made eight graphic artworks of Joseph Beuys, illustrated in Joseph Beuys die Multiples, published by Schellman München, New York, 1982. In 1984 he discovered American graffiti artists at the Kunstmesse in Basel, and upon his invitation they all went to Lecce: A-One, Rammelzee, Daze, Phase 2, Toxic and others painted the artist’s studio / country home.

In 1985 he put on a solo exhibition of works by A-One in the Piccolo Museo gallery in Lecce. In 1985, ’86, ’87, ’88 and ’89, he frequented Boetti’s studios in Rome, Beuys’s and Droese’s in Düsseldorf and Gais’s in Berlin.

In 1990, he published Natura-Naturae, in which he stated his concept and theory of “art as a means of knowledge”, which he later took up and reformulated in a volume published in 1998. In 1992 came Le Tappe della Storia with an essay by Toti Carpentieri. Nel 1995 at Castello Carlo V, Lecce, Scultura e Affreschi with an essay by Ilderosa Laudisa. Nel 1996, Rapporto Joseph Beuys – Corrado Lorenzo in Rome at the Accademia d’Europa.

Nel 1998 he published Arte come modo di conoscenza with a presentation by Raffaele Nigro, a brief treatise which also illustrated his poetic vision.

Then came exhibitions in Rome (Accademia d’Europa), Potenza (Museo Provinciale), Macerata (Pinacoteca A.C.), Bari (Arte Fiera), Ravenna (Galleria Sumithra), Turin (Artissima), Padua (Arte Fiera), Milan (MiArt), Zagreb (Faverel to Millenium), Lecce (Fondazione Memmo), Taranto (Palazzo Galizia), L’Aquila (Castello Cinquecentesco) and others, all the way through to his recent assemblages of materials (Legni), using wood, paper and fragments inside the chromatic material, as though in a rediscovery of painting.