Achille Bonito Oliva (born 1939) is an Italian art critic and historian of contemporary art. Since 1968 he has taught history of contemporary art at La Sapienza, the university of Rome. He has written extensively on contemporary art and contemporary artists; he originated the term Transavanguardia to describe the new direction taken in the late 1970s by artists such as Sandro Chia, Francesco Clemente, Enzo Cucchi, Nicola De Maria, and Mimmo Paladino. He has organised or curated numerous contemporary art events and exhibitions; in 1993 he was artistic director of the Biennale di Venezia. Life and career Bonito Oliva was born in 1939 in Caggiano, in the province of Salerno, in Campania in southern Italy. He studied law, and then took a degree in letters. He took part in events connected with the avant-garde Gruppo 63 literary movement of the 1960s. In 1968 he began teaching history of contemporary art at La Sapienza, the university of Rome. He became active as an art critic, as a writer on history of art – with work on Mannerism, the historic Avant-Garde movements, and the Neo-Avantgarde – and as an organiser and curator of contemporary art events and exhibitions. Bonito Oliva has curated thematic and interdisciplinary exhibitions, including "Contemporanea" (Villa Borghese, Rome, 1974), "Aperto 1980" (together with Harald Szeemann, Venice Biennale, 1980), "Avanguardia Transavanguardia" (Mura Aureliane, Rome, 1982), "'Mythe, Drame, Tragedie", Musée d'Art et d'Industrie, Paris (1982), "Art and Depression" (Museo Correr, Venice, 1984), and "Minimalia" (P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York, 1998). He directed the 45th Venice Biennale (1993), the 3rd Dakar Biennale (1998), the 1st Valencia Biennale (2001), and was the curator of the Italian Pavilion at the 7th Paris Biennale (1971). He has been awarded several prizes and recognitions, including the Valentino d’Oro, an international prize for art critics, in 1991. In about 1978 he coined the term Transavanguardia to describe the work of artists such as Sandro Chia, Francesco Clemente, Enzo Cucchi, Nicola De Maria and Mimmo Paladino, who – in a manner comparable to that of the Neo-Expressionists and the Neue Wilden – discarded the abstract and conceptual approach of the Neo-Avantgarde and instead returned to figurative painting using the traditional techniques and materials, and at times also the forms and motifs, of the past. Bonito Oliva curated an exhibition of their work at the Biennale di Venezia in 1980. Books Bonito Oliva has written many books, including