Francesco del Drago was born in Rome on February 22, 1920.

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His father Clemente, although an amateur painter, was his first teacher, teaching him the first rudiments of the oil technique. In 1932, his parents enrolled him in the courses of the painter Leone Alberto Rosa, author of “The Technique of Painting from Primordi to the Present Day”.

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The last events of the war, in which he participated as a Grenadier officer, his involvement in the resistance as well as his classical studies kept him away from painting for several years. It was only a postponed appointment: he returned to painting by registering at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, where he became friends with Severini, Morandi, Birolli, Birolli, Ferrazzi, Ferrazzi, Guttuso and Pignon.

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In 1948, he obtained from the Ministry of Education a study at the Villa Massimo Academy, where he found himself in the company of five other artists: Guttuso, Greco, Mazzacurati, Mazzacurati, Leoncillo and Ciampolini.

This association was fundamental for his artistic maturation. By 1950, he was already recognized by established critics such as Guzzi, Maltese, Venturi, and Trucchi as one of the most gifted young painters. In 1951, at the Borletti Prize, Guttuso presented him as the best Italian painter of his time.

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Despite the invitation to the Venice Biennale and the success of his first exhibition in 1950, he felt a sense of incompleteness compared to the achievements of the great French masters. This prompted him to settle permanently in Paris in 1951 after two stays in 1948 and 1950. In Paris, he met Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger, Fernand Léger, Pierre Bonnard, Pierre Bonnard, Henri Matisse, and Raoul Dufy, as well as geometric abstractionists like Auguste Herbin and Dewasne, and the surrealist Roberto Matta. Del Drago achieved extremely personal results, merging previous discoveries and new ideas around 1965.

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Recognized as one of the best painters of his time, he was invited to the Salon de Mai and the Salon des Réalities Nouvelles. In the 1980s, his main theoretical discoveries, including the various versions of the Color Circle, were exposed.

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He taught at numerous universities around the world, synthesizing theory and attention to form in his works. Until a few years before his death in 2011, he continued to paint, dividing his time between his studios in Paris and Filacciano. His last series of paintings dates from 2007.