Graziano Gasparini

Graziano Gasparini (31 July 1924 – 30 November 2019) was a Venezuelan architect, photographer, painter and historian, sometimes referred to as Graciano Gasparini (ie using a Spanish version of his first name).

Gasparini was born in Gorizia, on the Italian–Slovenian border, in 1924. After completing his education in Venice, he worked for Carlo Scarpa in connection with the Biennale. After a break caused by the Second World War, the famous exhibition resumed in 1948, and Gasparini first visited Venezuela that year while promoting it. He settled in Caracas and pursued a career as an architect. He specialised in restoring Spanish Colonial architecture, while developing a parallel career as an architectural historian. The buildings he worked on include the Bolivarian Museum in Caracas, which was inaugurated in 1960.

His scholarship was recognised by the award of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1987.

He died in Caracas, aged 95.

Marriages
Gasparini's first wife was the Venezuelan sociologist Olga Lagrange, who died in 1971.

Some of his publications were written jointly with his second wife, the american anthropologist Luise Margolies.

Brother
His brother Paolo Gasparini (1934, Gorizia, Italy) was trained as a photographer within the Italian neorealist current, at the beginning of the fifties. In 1955 he settled in Venezuela.