Artist, disseminator and cultural promoter, animator of the artistic life of a complex territory, the figure of Michele Rosa stands out for almost a century, anticipating ideas and currents, maintaining a clear interpretative understanding of the times lived. With profound courage, he faced social issues, labor, ecology, without neglecting the intense lyrics of landscapes and the ecstatic visions of the female body. He was a lucid witness of social, cultural, and artistic phenomena, a frenetic and engaging intellectual, capable of expressing his poetics through art until the last days of his life, which ended on June 24, 2021, in Sora, his hometown.

Michele was born in Sora on September 1, 1925. He attended the Scientific High School in Rome and then the Ripetta Art High School, continuing his studies at the Faculty of Architecture. He began painting at a very young age and frequented the Trinità dei Monti, Piazza di Spagna, and Via Margutta areas, along with artists, intellectuals, and representatives of the cinema and entertainment world of that time. In 1950, he moved first to the University of Naples and then in 1953 to the United States, where he attended courses at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Champaign, Illinois: here he worked at the Department of Nuclear Physics, under the direction of the Italian scientist Gilberto Bernardini. At the end of 1956, he left the USA to return to Europe, rejecting the position of Art History professor at the University of London.

His artistic research, from the beginning, is therefore rich in the contemporary contaminations absorbed during his overseas education but presents a personal style that ranges from popular and folkloric tradition to exploring the themes of post-war reconstruction, between industrial sites and ancient villages.