Leonardo Cremonini was born on 26 November 1925 in Bologna, Italy.
He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna and at the end of the war, in 1945, he moved to Milan where he attended Brera Academy and met important figures in the Italian cultural scene. In 1951 he moves to Paris thanks to a bursary, where he installs his main residency. He lived for long periods abroad, in New York, where he exhibited extensively from 1952 to 1960, Florence, Andalusia, Normandy, and the isle of Panarea in Sicily.
His most significant retrospectives have been held worldwide in the museums of Basel, Brussels, Metz, Paris, Prague, Siena, Strasbourg, Spoleto, Tokyo, Aosta, Monte Carlo, Grenoble, Toulon and Milan.
In 1964 he exhibited at the Venice Biennale. In 1967 he got the Marzotto International Prize and in 1979, the Prize from the Italian President of the Republic. From 1983 to 1992 he directed the painting course at the “Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts” in Paris. He was nominated “Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres” in France, member of the Royal Academy of Belgium, member of the San Luca National Academy in Rome and of the “Accademia delle Arti e del Disegno” in Florence.