(Terzigno NA, 1929-2006) Art contemporary icon, less acknowledged as a sculptor, he dedicates his entire life as a man and as an artist to the skin of the painting. He starts his career with collages of dried leaves and making portraits with chromatic modulations. Followed by material research with the usage of stones and minerals, gathered on the Vesuvius, which are used to make is figurative works. His sense of the risk and of the freedom lead him first in Rome where he intensifies the experimentation with sackcloth for the artworks and where starts a collaboration with Fellini and draws models and clothes for the stylist Schubert.
Still very young he moves to the US, where attends assiduously the studies of Pollock and Rothko: from the first, he learned the freedom of creative gesture, the second instead influenced his colours and transparencies. With Giulio Carlo Argan, his precious friend and admirer, get in touch with the experimentation of Lucio Fontana, he starts to remove rather than add, the only way to reach the essentiality. He cut out the colour preferring the canvas only, successively he untwisted it, subtracting to glimpse behind it, the space is not dead anymore but is actively involved in the painting. This is the project that brings to the making of canvas with a strong abstract emotionality, an art that is a sign, a gesture but not a word. The definitive and official accolade is reached years later with the Biennale of Venice, the Metropolitan Museum of New York, the Uffizi Gallery of Firenze, the Royal Palace of Napoli. His artworks, both paintings and sculptures, are included in the most important contemporary art collections, both public and private.
