Cesare Pietroiusti (Rome, 1955) graduated in Medicine in 1979 with a thesis in Clinical Psychiatry. In 1977, he participated in his first exhibition, a group show titled “Quattro artisti inediti” at an exhibition space run by Sergio Lombardo. Together with Lombardo, Anna Homberg, and Domenico Nardone, he would go on to found the Rivista di Psicologia dell’Arte, publishing its first issue in 1979. The journal was created as a scientific dissemination organ for the Centro Studi Jartrakor—an experimental gallery and space founded in Rome in 1977 around the artist Sergio Lombardo—as well as for "Eventualist Theory," the theoretical foundation of the Center's activities. Giovanni Di Stefano, Miriam Mirolla, Paola Ferraris, and Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev subsequently became full members of the group. In the second half of the 1980s, alongside Salvatore Falci, Stefano Fontana, Pino Modica, and Domenico Nardone, he co-founded the so-called Piombino Group, through which he began experimenting with the interactions of artworks with an unaware audience. In 1996, invited to the 12th Rome Quadrennial, he expanded his invitation first to artist friends and collaborators, ultimately opening the exhibition up to anyone who wished to participate.

Between 1997 and 2001, he was one of the coordinators of the “Oreste” artist residencies in Paliano and Montescaglioso. Nearly 300 artists and curators participated in this ever-evolving workshop, which developed over several stages over the years. In 1999, the “Progetto Oreste” landed at the 48th Venice Biennale at the invitation of Harald Szeemann, participating in dAPERTutto with a series of meetings, performances, discussions, conferences, and informal gatherings, totaling around 100 events with the active participation of over 500 people. In the same year, he won the Alinovi Daolio Prize. In 2000, he co-founded Nomads & Residents, and from 2006 to 2011, he was a member of the Scientific Committee and co-curator of the Advanced Course in Visual Arts at the Fondazione Ratti in Como. Between 2009 and 2016, he taught in the MFA program at the Art Institute of Boston / Lesley University. Since 2004, he has been a professor of the "Visual Arts Lab" at IUAV University in Venice and, since 2021, at NABA in Rome. Since 2015, he has been the co-founder and president of the Fondazione Lac o Le Mon in San Cesario di Lecce, as well as a member of the organizing committee for the Italian Contemporary Art Forum. Since 1977, he has exhibited individually and collectively in both institutional and non-institutional, public and private spaces in Italy and abroad.

In recent years, his work has focused primarily on the theme of exchange and the paradoxes that can arise within the folds of economic systems and regulations. Since 2004, he has staged various performances, including irreversibly transforming other people's banknotes, distributing tens of thousands of individually produced and signed drawings for free, selling stories, swallowing banknotes at the end of an auction and returning them to their rightful owner after evacuation, opening shops where the goods for sale are banknotes and the "currency" used to purchase them is the customer's gaze, organizing restaurants where, at the end of the meal, instead of paying, guests receive the amount of money listed for the food on the menu, and setting up exhibitions where the artworks are for sale not in exchange for money, but for the visitors' ideas or proposals.

Among his recent exhibitions and projects are Tragicomica, curated by Andrea Bellini and Francesco Stocchi at Maxxi, Rome (2026); Facile ironia, curated by Lorenzo Balbi at MAMbo, Bologna (2025); 1+1. Arte relazionale, curated by Nicolas Bourriaud at Maxxi, Rome (2025/26); Materia paterna at The Gallery Apart, Rome (2025); Tecnologie obsolete e processi di produzione semplici at Galleria Michela Rizzo, Venice (2024); Agenti patogeni e morfogenesi del disegno. Tremila opere in fieri at Spazio Murat, Bari (2024); Under the Spell of Duchamp, curated by Eva Brioschi at Fondazione delle Nogare, Bolzano (2024); Infinita infanzia, curated by Saverio Verini at Palazzo Collicola, Spoleto (2024); Mein letzter Wille / My Last Will, curated by M+M at Kunstsamm. Chemnitz and Casino Luxembourg (2023-2024); Più che opere, storie at Museo d’Inverno, Siena (2023); La collezione impermanente #4, curated by Sara Fumagalli, Fabrizia Previtali, and Valentina Gervasoni at Gamec, Bergamo (2023); Relazioni (im)possibili. Il fil rouge da Piero Manzoni a oggi, curated by Demis Martinelli and Rosalia Pasqualino di Marineo at Museo della Stampa, Soncino (CR) (2023); Liquidi. Ryts Monet e Cesare Pietroiusti at Galleria Michela Rizzo, Mestre (2022); Spazio territorio. Quattro artisti in dialogo con Vincenzo Agnetti, curated by Giorgio Verzotti at Archivio Agnetti, Milan (2022); (in)visible fields. Space as energy, curated by Elena Forin at Galleria Michela Rizzo, Venice (2022); A Variable Number of Things, curated by Marie-Josè Sondejiker at West Den Haag, The Hague (2020-21); Money, Money, Money, curated by Elena Forin at Galleria Michela Rizzo, Venice (2021); and Consegna all'artista una tua banconota, curated by Francesca Guerisoli at Fondazione Pietro e Alberto Rossini, Briosco (MI) (2020). His retrospective Un certo numero di cose 1955-2019, curated by Lorenzo Balbi and held at MAMbo in Bologna (2019-2020), was the winner of the 4th edition of the Italian Council.