The painter and sculptor studied drawing, fresco painting, and sculpture until 1969 at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence. In the late 1960s he travelled in India, Turkey and Europe before setting in Rome in 1970. There in 1971 he had his first exhibition at the Galleria La Salita. Since the beginning of the 1980s he kept a second studio in New York. In 1980 he received a scholarship from the city of Mönchengladbach. By order of the city of Bielefeld Chia erected the bronze sculpture 'Passione per l'arte' on the Rathausplatz. Shortly afterwards he was put in charge of painting a hall at the Equitable Centre in New York as well as producing a quatered monumental mural with the subject of the Sienese Palio. In the 1970s Chia attended to Conceptual Art, whereby the monochromatic works of Yves Klein had a great influence on him. In the mid-1970s painting gained in importance as the primary artistic form of expression. Sandro Chia belongs among Francesco Clemente, Enzo Cucchi and Mimmo Paladino to the main protagonists of the Italian Transavanguardia, which developed in the second half of the 1970s in Italy and rediscovered traditional handicraft techniques. Until the present day figurative-objective image worlds come into existence, which reflect in a subjective-expressive way tradition and history often in combination with texts and poems. At the latest the artist's participation in the documenta 7 in Kassel in 1982 as well as in the Biennale in Venice in 1988 prove the artist's international importance. Chia lives with his family in Castello Romitorio near Siena since 1999.