Marco Nereo Rotelli was born in Venice in 1955, where he graduated in architecture in 1982.

For years Rotelli researched light and the poetic dimension, which Harald Szeemann has defined “an expansion of the artistic contest”.
Rotelli has created a solid relationship between art and other disciplines of knowledge for years. Involving in his research as a consequence, philosophers, musicians, photographers, film directors, but mainly the relationship is between his art and poetry, which has become a constant reference to his work.

Highlighted among the big installations Rotelli has realized:

1996, the piéce homage to the La Fenice theater, which had been recently destroyed by an arson, presented at Quadriennale di Roma;

2000, the lighting of Petit Palais’ façade in Paris with verses from L’horloge by Baudelaire;

2001, the involvement of one thousand among some of the most important contemporary poets, expression of all the tendencies and all the continents, for the installation Bunker Poetico, realized at the 49th Biennale di Arti Visive di Venezia, strongly wanted by Harald Szeemann;

2002, in Carrara, in occasion of the 11st Biennale di Scultura, the recovery of an abandoned quarry and its transformation in a big marble book, carving poetic verses on its walls;

2002, the great landscape installation Poetry for Peace in Seoul in the World Cup Park;

2005, at the 51st Biennale di Arti Visive di Venezia, the recovery of the San Secondo Island, in the Venetian lagoon, with a big light-installation, for which he was awarded the Presidenza della Repubblica silver plate;

2007, the permanent installation for the Living Theatre in New York, wanted by Judith Malina and dedicated to the Beat Generation;

2008, in Jinan, China, invited to participate to the Shandong University international Biennal of Art and Design, within the Olympic manifestations, an installation characterized by a tragic and poetic dimension, for the year of the Sichuan earthquake, for which he has been awarded the Academy Award of Art and Design: prize that confirms again the deep sense of his research veiled in poetry and spirituality and which is developing, as an artistic act, in defense of lost identities;

2008, in Paris, the work of art The Golden Wood realized with one hundred golden doors along the Champs Élysées;

2009, the great work of art “Save the Poetry” exposed in the windows of the Espace culturel Louis Vuitton in Paris;

2009, the light installation on the façade of the Santiago de Compostela cathedral during the Fiesta del Apóstol;

2010, in Milan, the project Poetry. Parola d’artista with an important retrospective in the Rotonda di Via Besana, an exhibition with the poet Adonis in Palazzo Reale, the sculpted installation Le pietre sono parole in Piazzetta Reale (Piazza Duomo);

in 2010 the project Genova s’illumina di poesia, homage to Edoardo Sanguineti, with the light installation in Strada Nuova and the permanent placement of the marble sculpture “e, lo vedi, è la vita:” at the Porto Antico of Genova;

in 2011 in Venice his light installation in Palazzo Ducale which opens the Padiglione Italia at 54th International Art Exhibition of the Biennale di Venezia;

in 2011 at Lido of Venice the light installation Le parole del cinema for the 68th Venice Film Festival;

in 2011 the artistic direction of the project “Art Explosion” and the realization of a series of light installations for the improvement of the Campi Flegrei (Naples) territory;

in 2012 the light installation homage to Wisława Szymborska in Ca’ Foscari, Venice;

in 2013 the light installation at the Field Museum, Chicago for the celebrations of the Year of Italian Culture in US;

in 2013 the light installation in Porto Antico of Genova for the opening of the new Padiglione dei Cetacei by Renzo Piano and Assapora la bellezza, Palazzo Reale, Milan;

in 2014 the creation of an artist palace in Padova, Casa Lux;

in 2015 the light installation at the Five Pavillion Bridge for the Slander West Lake International Poetry Festival in Yangzhou, China;

in 2016 the light installations for the opening of the new Palestinian Museum in Birzeit and for the XX Anniversary of Pienza, Unesco World Heritage Centre;

in 2017 the great exhibition with Adonis and the light installation at MACRO, Rome;

in 2018 the important light work for the San Miniato al Monte Millenieal, Florence.

In 2000 he founded the group Art Project, directed by Elena Lombardi with Margherita Zambelli e Filippo Cavalli and composed by young artists and architects with whom he realizes numerous interventions and urban installation projects.

He was invited by Northwestern University as “artist-in-residence” (Winter 2013).

This involvement has seen him participate to seven editions of the Biennale di Venezia, as well as numerous individual and collective exhibitions.

His works of art are in important museums and private collections all over the world. Important art critics, as well as poets, writers, philosophers and international cultural celebrities have written about him, increasing an important bibliographic collection on his work.