Velasco Vitali was born in 1960 in Bellano, on the Lake Como. Working in Milan, Sicily, and near his birthplace, he draws, paints, and makes sculptures out of iron and cement. He began by working with drawing and graphic art, but soon turned towards painting and is now expanding to sculpture.

He won the "San Fedele Engraving Prize" for Young Artists in 1983, and the following year he was invited by Giovanni Testori to appear at the Rotonda della Besana in Milan in the exhibition "Artisti e scrittori". This marked the beginning of an important working relationship, with the Milanese critic and poet, which led Velasco to illustrate Il dio di Roserio, a book by Testori published in 1994. And it was Testori, again, who called upon the young curator Vittorio Sgarbi to organize Velasco's first solo show in Milan, an exhibition devoted to drawings and paintings (1986).

After various solo exhibitions in the north of Italy, Velasco's paintings focused on the tragedy that destroyed part of the Valtellina valley in the late eighties; Velasco depicted the human and environmental drama of the landslide of 1987, channeling his work into "Paesaggio Cancellato," an exhibition curated by Roberto Tassi in Sondrio (1990).

In Velasco's artistic explorations there is a constant interest in portraiture, which has been affirmed in various ways: from the exhibition "Ritratto" in 1991, to the publication of Vedere le facce, a book produced in 1997 with the critical involvement of Marco Vallora and Dario Voltolini.

In the late nineties he joined the Officina milanese group, which emerged around the critic Alessandro Riva, and his work showed an inversion of interest in terms of content: painting continued to be the main focus, and Velasco "discovered" the south by way of Sicily. This new light gave rise to "Isolitudine", with an introduction by Ferdinando Scianna, in 2000, and "MIXtura", a project devoted to works on paper, with the collaboration of Franco Battiato, in 2003.

In 2003 Velasco also joined the Italian Factory project, participating in exhibitions in the context of the 50th Biennale of Venice, in Strasbourg at the European Parliament, and in the stage presented at the Palazzo della Promotrice delle Belle Arti in Turin.

In 2004 Electa published Velasco 20, a monograph on the artist's first twenty years of work, with a critical-philosophical contribution by Giulio Giorello.

"Extramoenia" is the name of the project that Velasco is constructing around images of cities, also incorporating sculpture. After an initial exhibition at the invitation of the Region of Sicily, presented at the Palazzo Belmonte Riso in Palermo, "Extramoenia" now comes to the Palazzo della Ragione in Milan, thus following an ideal itinerary from south to north, from city to city. In the exhibition there are large paintings and sculptures made of iron and cement; there are paintings of cities, districts, streets, and houses; and there are sculptures of dogs, alone and in packs, both wild and mongrel.

After the collaboration with Oliviero Toscani for the project Vota Velasco, in the summer 2004 the artist shows at Iconica, Archeologia and Arte Contemporanea, both sponsored by Region of Sicily and Italian Factory.

One of Velasco's works has been permanently acquired by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

In 2005 the MACRO Museum of Rome acquired a group of Velasco's sculptures. (Mattatoio from June till September).