Professor Davide Prete

Davide Prete is an Assistant Professor of Art at UDC’s Division of Arts and Humanities in the College of Arts and Sciences. Born in Treviso, Italy, Davide was introduced to the art of metalsmithing by his father, Alessandro, and by the famous sculptor Toni Benetton. He studied jewelry and metalsmithing at the Institute of Art in Venice. In 2003, he obtained his degree in architecture at IUAV, Venice, Italy. Davide has worked as an architect for several architectural firms. He moved to the U.S. in 2007, and in 2010 he earned his Master’s of Fine Arts in Sculpture from Fontbonne University, in St. Louis, where he studied with Hank Knickmeyer and developed a personal sculptural process, mixing traditional metal casting and new technologies.

His work has been shown at national and international venues (Italy, Germany, Czech Republic, England, France and the USA) and his urban scale sculptures are installed in Italy and the USA.

Recently, his work has focused on new technologies such as 3D printing and laser scanning combined with traditional metalsmithing techniques. For his last projects, mathematical equations provided him with a pretext to connect figurative images with a new language in order to discover what he called “a new form of shamanism.”