Gianfranco Pardi was born in Milan in 1933. Like many of his contemporaries of the 1960s, Pardi refused to limit himself to a strictly defined medium. Instead he sought to combine, meld and ultimately redefine what he was working on and working with. He took a constructivist approach to his organisation of space, combining drawing, painting and sculpture of great formal rigour within integrated spatial compositions that were architectural in scope.
The 1960s were a decade of progress for Pardi. In 1959 he had held his first solo exhibition at Galleria Alberti in Brescia, backed up by another the following year at Galleria Colonna in Milan. In 1965 he participated in the group exhibition La figuration narrative dans l’art contemporain in Paris. In 1967 he began his collaboration with Studio Marconi in Milan, focusing on creating works that were a new interpretation of historical avant-gardes, such as abstractionism, suprematism, constructivism and neoplasticism. His architectural pieces from the 1970s were characterised by a determination to create space – only then to destroy it – using pared-back methods of construction and destruction. Colour was used to facilitate the overall rendering of the space, and his works from this period betrayed a predisposition towards the conceptual nature of primary colours applied to the surface in an entirely linear way.
In the late eighties and early nineties he produced the works in his Cinema, Monk e Maschere series, which centred on the use of iron supports. Later his artistic research focused on the theme of Montagna-Sainte Victoire, inspired by the works of Cézanne, his Nagjma cycles, inspired by the evening sights and light of Tangier, and Box, creations using cardboard boxes.
In 1974 he took part in the 27th Biennale at Palazzo della Permanente in Milan, an experience he would repeat in 1993. In 1981 he was part of two major collective exhibitions: Lines of artistic research in Italy 1960/1980 at Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome and Il luogo della forma at Museo di Castelvecchio in Verona. In 1984 the University of Parma organised a major anthology and in 1986 he enjoyed solo exhibitions at the Venice Biennale, the Milan Triennale and the Rome Quadriennale. In 1998, Palazzo Reale in Milan hosted a dedicated solo exhibition. The following year a series of important exhibitions were organised in Germany at the Frankfurt Art Association, Bochum Art Museum and Stralsund Museum of Art History. 2000 saw Giò Marconi Gallery in Milan play host to his solo exhibition Homeless. His retrospective Sheets was held at Galleria Fumagalli in Bergamo in 2002, while in 2003 he exhibited again at Giò Marconi Gallery with the series of works Danza e Restauro. Some of his most recent solo exhibitions have taken place at the Marconi Foundation in Milan (2014), Galerie Balice Hertling, Paris (2015), Cortesi Gallery in Lugano (2016) and London (2017).
He produced numerous sculptures for public and private spaces, including the Bellevue Hotel, Malcesine, Verona (1988); the General Command of the Finance Police, Via XX Settembre, Rome (1995); the Costa Victoria cruise ship, Genoa (1996); Casa Zanaria, Rue de Bièvre, Paris (1998); Soundtrack, headquarters of Snam S.p.A., San Donato Milanese, Milan (1999); Box, Cascina Mangiagruppa, Zeme, Pavia, (2001); Sheet, ACF Bergamo, Brembate Sopra, Bergamo (2002); Danza, Piazza Amendola, Milan (2006); and Sprigionamenti, Negombo, Bay of San Montano, Ischia, (2015). He became a member of the National Academy of San Luca in 2008.
Pardi passed away in 2012. The following year, a cultural association and archives were established in his memory.