Piero Dorazio, 77; One of the Fathers of Italian Abstract Painting

Piero Dorazio, 77, considered one of the fathers of Italian abstract painting, died Tuesday in Perugia, Italy, after being treated for kidney problems that stemmed from diabetes, hospital officials said.

A painter and a sculptor who had studied architecture in Rome and Paris, Dorazio joined various avant-garde movements and attracted attention in the late 1950s for the way he represented space using the vibration of light through a transparent structure.

Among his first works in the 1950s was a collective mural painting in Milan. For the last three decades, he had lived in the Umbrian town of Todi, where he continued his work with fragments of colored lines in big compositions.

In 1951, Dorazio organized a national exhibit of abstract art at Rome’s National Gallery of Modern Art. Dorazio had a personal show in a New York gallery, and in the 1960s began teaching at the University of Pennsylvania.

In 1956, he was invited to exhibit in the Venice’s Biennale, the first of several showings by Dorazio there.