Renato Meneghetti was born in 1947 in Rosà di Vicenza in upper Italy and began painting at the age of ten. He studied architecture and design under Carlo Scarpa in Venice, but taught himself how to paint. Like many other Italian artists he is a huomo universale, who masters many different styles and techniques. He became famous in his home country not only as an architect and a designer, but also as a composer and a musician, as a stage and performance artist, as a film producer, a sculptor and finally also as a painter.
As a young artist during the 1960s Meneghetti sought the acquaintance of exhibition organisers as well as artists such as Carlo Munari, Giorgio de Chirico and Lucio Fontana. His first one-man exhibition, which included his "Monotipi" (monotypes) in black and white, sketchy, rhythmical scenes with fragile, dancing figures, took place in 1966 in Bassano di Grappa. At the end of the 1960s Meneghetti made his "Fagocitatrice", paintings and objects, which he covered in paint and then partially scraped the paint off again. After an artistic crisis in 1970 during which Meneghetti's canvases remained white, he began painting again in 1973 and continued his series of "Fagocitatrice". At the beginning of the 1980s he worked on various music projects and produced a film, which was shown at the XL Film Biennale in Venice. Meneghetti managed the theatre festival "Patavanitas" in Padua in 1993 and won the "Fenice d'oro" for the best theatre production of the year. Meneghetti began experimenting with performance art in 1984, analysing the relationship between sound and the image. Then he worked as a journalist under the pseudonym "Phagocytized". He attended the conference "il silentio, il secreto" in 1984, which was organised by thirty of the most famous names in the art world. As a result Meneghetti began analysing his own inner self, searching for artistic inspiration from within. This was followed by a calmer phase in his life, without much publicity, which lasted for eleven years after which the artist reappeared with several one-man exhibitions. Meneghetti began making his "radiographs" in 1997, X-rays which he paints over and alienates. The artist himself explained that they reveal a section of the innermost parts of mankind, which repeats itself in everything - the whole and the detail - of the material outer world. Meneghetti has had fourteen one-man exhibitions since 1964 and there have been numerous publications about his work, also by German authors, such as Martin Heidegger. At present he is preparing exhibitions in Germany.