1935 Born in Brooklyn, USA
He studied art with Peter Busa at State University College of New York in Buffalo, USA.

Michael Venezia is widely considered to have played a major role in the renewal of painting in the 1960s. Back then, together with artist colleagues such as Dan Flavin, Robert Ryman, or Sol LeWitt, Venezia shared the opinion that routine and narcissism had become predominant in Abstract Expressionism, tendencies which they aimed to overcome and transcend. At the end of the 1960s Michael Venezia thus discovered the spray-paint gun as an adequate means to leave behind the gestural and handwritten touch of the brushstroke. Another important step was the reduction of the picture plane to a long narrow wooden bar. Until today, Venezia has remained faithful to this image format on which – by applying new techniques and combining several bars – he continues to achieve new and surprising painterly qualities.