From 15 May to 19 June 2016
The inauguration of the Bernard Dreyfus exhibition will take place on Saturday 14 May, from 18.00 at the San Gaetano Cultural Center in Padua.
The retrospective exhibition dedicated to Bernard Dreyfus presents more than 150 works from the early works of the 60s to the last works.
Bernard Dreyfus was born in 1940 in Nicaragua. The culture of Central America draws its inspiration from an almost primitive imprint. The second influence young Dreyfus receives is that of France. His family sends him to study in Paris and in 1957 he becomes aware of his own pictorial vocation and to experiment with its possibilities. He matures alongside the artists he frequents: Chana Orloff, Mela Mutter and others, as well as personalities such as Charles Vildrac and André Salmon. Everyone encourages him to pursue his vocation for which they recognize his unreserved talent. Bernard Dorival, then deputy director of the Musée national d'art moderni, expresses the same encouraging opinion. 
After Paris Bernard Dreyfus enrolled at the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles, where he followed the teaching of the abstract painter Lorser Feitelson. The meeting with the American photographer and painter Man Ray is crucial. Dreyfus graduated from this institute in 1965. José Gómez-Sicre, head of plastic arts at the Organization of American States and former consultant to Alfred Barr at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, gave him his first personal exhibition, in April 1972 at the Organization of American States in Washington. Kitty Meyer, an American friend who would like to convince him to move to New York, introduces him to Calder, Larry Rivers, Norman Mailer and other famous names on the New York art scene, but Bernard Dreyfus chooses France. Since July 1972, the artist has been working in his studio in Paris. His works are exhibited in the United States, South America, Europe and Asia.