Painter and printmaker Antonio Scordia was born in Santa Fe, Argentina, in 1918. His family moved to Italy when Scordia was thirteen, and from 1936 to 1944 he attended the French Academy in Rome. He began to exhibit in 1945 in Rome with an eye toward Scuola Romana, the style of the Italian Expressionist movement.

Scordia returned to Argentina from 1947 to 1950 before settling in France, dividing his time between Paris and London. The 1950s saw the beginning of his inernational exhibiting career, and in 1952 he participated for the first time in the Biennale of Venice, in which he would participate again in the years 1954, 1956, 1958 and 1964. In the 1960s he also exhibited in the Biennales of Sao Paolo and Tokyo, as well as various international Italian exhibitions in the cities of New York, Moscow, Copenhagen, Johannesburg, and New Delhi. Scordia's travels also took him to Egypt, Spain, and Greece.

Apart from his fine art pursuits, he also collaborated with famed Italian director Federico Fellini on the scenery of the 1969 film Satyricon. His first great retrospective organized by the Ente Premi Roma took place in 1976 at the Palazzo Barberini in Rome. During the 1980s he exhibited in Rome and participated in the show Generazione Anni Dieci in Rieti, in the show Index in Paternò, and in the show L’Astratto Italiano. Scordia died in Rome in 1989.