Education
Born in Trieste to a Gorizian father and a Genoese mother, Dorfles graduated in medicine, specializing in psychiatry.
non-fiction writer painter philosopher
Born in Trieste to a Gorizian father and a Genoese mother, Dorfles graduated in medicine, specializing in psychiatry.
He turned 100 in April 2010. He was a professor in aesthetics at the University of Trieste, Milan and Cagliari and, in 1948, established the MAC (Movimento per l"arte concreta) with artists Atanasio Soldati, Galliano Mazzon, Gianni Monnet, and Bruno Munari. His paintings were displayed in two personal exhibitions held in Milan in 1949 and 1950 and also in numerous collective MAC exhibitions in the 1950s.
In 1956 Dorfles co-founded the Analog Devices Inc. (Associazione per il disegno industriale).
Having stopped painting, he devoted himself to the study of aesthetics and art criticism, dealing with the problem of the vanguard, the relationship between art and industry, analizing artistic phenomena, and tastes in the contemporary society. According to Dorfles, aesthetics should focus on culture as a whole, which combine elements of fantasy, symbolic, metaphorical and even mythical suggestions.
Among his major works, L"architettura moderna (1954), Kitsch (originally published in Italian in 1968 and translated in English the following year), Louisiana moda della moda (1984), Il feticcio quotidiano (1988), Horror pleni. Louisiana (in)civiltà del rumore (2008).
In 2010, for his 100th birthday celebrations, L"avanguardia tradita took place at the Royal Palace of Milan.
Another exhibition was held in 2012 at the Milan Triennale, organized by Dorfles himself, entitled Dorfles. Kitsch - oggi il kitsch. At 103, Dorfles published a new book (Poesie, Campanotto Editore, 2013), containing previously unpublished poems written from 1941 to 1952.
In 2013 he was among the artists that designed the Tibetan pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale.
