He was born in Rome on 19th February 1924 to Guido Vespignani and Ester Molinari, great-grandson of Virginio Vespignani, a famous architect. After his father's death, who was an esteemed surgeon and cardiologist, he had to move with his mother at a very young age to the proletarian area of Portonaccio, near the San Lorenzo neighbourhood, where he grew up. Here, during the period of Nazi occupation of the Italian capital, in hiding like so many of his peers, he began to draw, trying to represent the cruel, dirty and pathetic reality around him: the bleakness of the urban suburbs landscape, the ruins and rubble caused by bombing, the tragedy of the misfits and the poverty of everyday life. His art was not limited only to the pictorial experience, he was also an illustrator of many masterpieces. His work as a stage designer was also important; he worked for ‘I giorni contati’ and ‘L'assassino’ by Elio Petri, ‘Maratona di danza’ and ‘Le Bassaridi’ by Hans Werner Henze, ‘I sette peccati capitali’ and ‘La madre’ by Bertolt Brecht, ‘Jenufa’ by Leoš Janáček. As an engraver, he produced more than four hundred pieces including etching, soft paint and lithograph.