At a very young age, Piero Dorazio commenced his artistic journey by frequenting the studio of painter Aldo Bandinelli, facilitated by a high school acquaintance. Dorazio delved into painting still lifes and landscapes, honing his skills as a self-taught artist. Additionally, he independently pursued a thorough study of art history.
In 1945, with Achille Perilli, Mino Guerrini, Lucio Manisco, Carlo Aymonino, Carlo Busiri Vici, Alfio Barbagallo, and Renzo Vespignani he founded the group Aries and then the Group Social Art. Two years later, with colleagues Giulio Turcato, Concetto Maugeri, Antonio Sanfilippo, and Carla Accardi he formed the group Forma 1 and published its manifesto in the magazine with the same name.
That same year, the artist traveled to Paris. Introduced by Gino Severini, he met artists such as Georges Braque, Fernand Léger, Hans Arp, and Alberto Magnelli. The following year, he began exhibiting, initially at the Quadriennale in Rome, at the Salon des réalités Nouvelles in Paris and then again in Rome, with the exhibition Arte astratta in Italia, organized with Atanasio Soldati and Ettore Sottsass.
In 1950, Piero Dorazio, along with Achille Perilli and Mino Guerrini, inaugurated the Age d’Or on Via del Babuino. This establishment served as both a gallery and a bookstore, specializing in avant-garde literature and periodicals, while also hosting exhibitions of abstract art. The following year, Dorazio, alongside Ettore Colla and Alberto Burri, established the Fondazione Origine, although he later disengaged from it in 1954.
In 1953, Dorazio received his first invitation from Harvard University to participate in an international seminar on Humanism and the Arts. Subsequently, he decided to relocate to New York, where he held his inaugural exhibition of drawings at the One-Wall Gallery. Within a year, the Rose Fried Gallery organized another solo exhibition dedicated to his work. Additionally, in 1955, the Rose Fried Gallery published the volume La fantasia dell’Arte nella vita moderna marking the first Italian publication on contemporary trends in visual arts. In 1957 it was the turn of his first solo exhibition in Rome at Galleria La Tartaruga, and in the same years his participation in the Venice Biennale and Documenta in Kassel took shape. The 1960s opened on a new prestigious assignment, as the University of Pennsylvania offered him the position of head of the Department of Fine Arts, which Dorazio carried on for the following ten years. In 1962 he joined Group Zero, participating in several group exhibitions and publications promoted in the following years. Three years later some of his works were shown at MoMA in the exhibition The Responsive Eye. In 1967 he collaborated with Giuseppe Ungaretti on the volume La Luce, a collection of poems and lithographs, for the Im Erker Gallery in St. Gallen, Switzerland.
In 1969, Dorazio moved to the Roman countryside, choosing to devote himself more and more exclusively to painting. He worked on numerous solo exhibitions in Italy and abroad during these years and traveled extensively in Greece, the Middle East and Africa. In 1974 he settled permanently in Todi, moving his studio to a restored Camaldolese hermitage in Canonica. In 1979 the first exhibition dedicated to him was organized at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, later presented at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo and in numerous museums in the United States. In 1983 a new anthological exhibition opened at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome, and the same year the artist participated with a selection of works in the exhibition Italian Art 1960-1980, at the Hayward Gallery in London. Three years later he was awarded a prize by the Accademia di San Luca in Rome, and in 1988 he participated in the Venice Biennale with a room entirely dedicated to his works.
The 1990s brought new exhibitions: in 1990 at the Musée de Grenoble, the following year at the Galleria Civica in Bologna, in 1994 at the Civic Museum of Athens, and in 1998 at Pac in Milan. In the same years, he was also awarded the Alcide de Gasperi Prize for arts and sciences, the Michelangelo Prize of the Pantheon Academy of the Virtuosi and was elected a member of the Akademia der Künste in Berlin. In 2001, the exhibition Dorazio Jazz at the Museion in Bolzano, and in 2003 the last major retrospective dedicated to him before his death, which occurred in 2005, took place at the IVAM- Institut Valencia D’Art Modern in Valencia.