Davide Prete is an Assistant Professor of Art at the University of District of Columbia’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 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. Later, he specialized in digital fabrication with a certificate from FabAcademy and in Additive Manufacturing with a certificate from MIT.
His work has been shown at national and international venues (Italy, Germany, Czech Republic, England, France, and the USA). His urban-scale sculptures are installed in Italy and the USA.
Recently, his work has focused on new technologies such as 3D printing, laser scanning, AI, and traditional metalsmithing techniques. For his last research, mathematical equations gave him the pretext to connect symbolic images with a new language to discover what he called “a new form of shamanism.”
