Lorenzato was born on February 19, 1900, in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais. Son of Italian immigrants Vitorio Lorenzato and Gema Terenzi, he grew up in a meadow in the Barreiro Agricultural Colony. In the 1910s, he attended the Silviano Brandão School Group and learned the basics of wall painting from the Italian Américo Grande. Later, he became the assistant of the painter Camilo Caminhas. In 1919, due to a serious epidemic of Spanish flu in the city of Belo Horizonte, the Lorenzato family sold all its assets and returned to Italy.
Until 1924, Lorenzato worked in the reconstruction of the city of Arsiero, destroyed during the First World War (1914-1918). In 1925, he moved to Vicenza, where he enrolled in the Reale Accademia Delle Arti. In 1926, he traveled to Rome and met the painter and caricaturist Cornelius Keesman. In 1928, Lorenzato and Cornelius left for the Asian continent, covering a great deal of Eastern Europe. The trip was called Voyage d'étude à travers l'Europe, and the artists presented themselves as étudiants d'arts. For two years they survived through the curiosity of local inhabitants, who bought the small gouaches and watercolors made by the artists.
In 1930, Lorenzato faced problems with his passport and returned to Italy, separating from Cornelius. He took a job in construction in Brussels, Belgium, and in setting up the pavilions for the International Colonial Exposition in Paris. Due to the death of his father, he returned to Arsiero in 1934. In 1935, he moved to Montevarchi to help run a restaurant. He met the waitress Emma Casprini, whom he married at the age of 35. Lorenzato moved with Emma to Castelnovo, where he built his studio. In 1936, his first and only son, Lorenzo Lorenzato, was born. During the Second World War (1939-1945), the intensification of the bombing of Castelnovo destroyed his house, the studio, and the work done so far.
In 1948, Lorenzato left his family in Italy and went to Rio de Janeiro, repatriated by the Brazilian government. In Petrópolis, he took a job at the Hotel Quitandinha, where he worked on the assembly of the stands for the Industry and Commerce Exhibition. During this period, he also made a series of paintings and watercolors on the Serra de Petrópolis. In 1949, he paid for Emma and her son to come to Brazil. The family then returned to Belo Horizonte, where they rented a house in the Carlos Prates neighborhood. He worked as a wall painter until 1956, when, while painting the exterior of two apartments, he fell and broke one of his legs in three places. It was from the second half of the 1950s that Lorenzato devoted himself entirely to painting.
In 1964, Lorenzato visited Galeria Grupiara, in Belo Horizonte, and presented some of his works to the journalist and art critic Sérgio Maldonado, who introduced him to the critic Palhano Júnior. In 1967, he held his first individual exhibition at Minas Tênis Clube. Between the second half of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s, he participated in group exhibitions at Galeria Guignard, Galeria Minart, and Minas Tênis Clube.
Lorenzato's work is marked by a visuality that transcends dichotomies. In some paintings, he presents us scenes inhabited by characters in activities of leisure, work, or contemplation. His sensitive "daily life of things" revisits a diversity of imaginary landscapes; rural, urban, maritime. Figurative or abstract, they emerge from a lived reality, but also awaken an affective and nostalgic memory. Through the grooves made with combs – a remnant of a technique for finishing wood and marble stucco – he imprints a particular texture and signals the sophistication that distances himself from the idea of a "primitive" painter. His foray into the minimalism of forms and the simplicity with which this vocabulary is integrated into the structure of the painting, giving movement to the clouds and vegetation, is a major marker of his pictorial research.
In 1973, Lorenzato was selected to represent Brazil at the 3rd Bratislava Triennial in Slovakia. His participation was followed by solo exhibitions at Galeria Guignard, in 1976, at Galeria Memória Cooperativa de Arte, in 1977, and his first solo show in the city of São Paulo, at Galeria Brasiliana, in 1981. In 1989, his works integrated the Brazil-Italy Cultural Exchange Project of Visual Arts, in Rome. In 1995, the Museu de Arte da Pampulha held the retrospective exhibition Lorenzato e as Cores do Cotidiano. Lorenzato died in 1995, in Belo Horizonte, due to complications from a cardiac arrest.
In 2000, the shows 100 Years of Amadeo Lorenzato, at Núcleo de Artes Casa dos Contos, and Amadeo Lorenzato, at Manoel Macedo Galeria de Arte, were held to celebrate the artist's centennial. Recent solo exhibitions include Lorenzato: simples singular, at Minas Tênis Clube (2018), Amadeo Luciano Lorenzato, at David Zwirner, and Amadeo Luciano Lorenzato, at S|2, both in London (2019), and Lorenzato: Paisagens, at Gomide&Co (2022). Still in 2022, his work was part of Histórias Brasileiras, a collective exhibition held at Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand – MASP. In 2024, David Zwirner exhibited his work again, this time at one of their sites in New York and in Hong Kong. In the same year, the artist's work was part of the selection at the 60th Biennale di Venezia, entitled Stranieri Ovunque - Foreigners Everywhere, curated by Adriano Pedrosa. In 2025, the Palácio das Artes in Belo Horizonte held the solo show Lorenzato: Imaginação Criativa [Lorenzato: Creative Imagination], bringing together more than 150 works by the artist.
His works are included in the collections of various museums and public collections, such as the Fundação Clóvis Salgado and the Museu de Arte da Pampulha, in Belo Horizonte; the Universidade Federal de Viçosa; the Pinacoteca de São Paulo and the Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand – MASP, the Museo del Barrio, in New York, among others.