Born in 1941 in Ciudad de La Plata, Argentina, Hugo De Marziani studied drawing and printmaking at the Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes in the 1950s. While in art school, he collected avant-garde art publications and studied reproductions of works by the Cubists (Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris, and Fernand Léger) and the Russian avant-garde (Wassily Kandinsky, El Lissitzky, and Kazimir Malevich). Emerging as a leading figure in the Concrete Art movement in Buenos Aires in the 1950s, De Marziani began to explore relationships between color, line, form, and the illusion of space. His early work examines the optical effects of movement through his use of geometric form and juxtaposition of color, informed by Joseph Albers' studies in color theory.  Spanning the years 1958 to 1960, these twelve works on paper engage playfully with the illusion of three-dimensionality on a two-dimensional surface. De Marziani’s overlapping squares and triangles float over and under each other, suggesting spatial relationships that are constantly in flux.

In the mid-1970s, De Marziani traveled in France and Italy. He spent a year in Milan, after receiving an award from the Italian government, where he began making abstract paintings with landscape themes. In 1985, De Marziani moved to New York for a Guggenheim Fellowship, where he studied the drawings of Georges Seurat. Returning to Buenos Aires in the late 1990s, he taught drawing and painting classes in the Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes Ernesto de la Cárcova. Since the early 2000s, De Marziani has returned to early abstractions, incorporating volume through the superposition of planes and textures. Today De Marziani lives and works in Buenos Aires.