SALVATORE FIUME – THE MYSTERY OF LIFE

Born in Comiso in 1915, he died in Milan in 1997. A multifaceted figure, he worked in painting, sculpture, architecture, set design, and literature. Thanks to a scholarship, he attended the Royal Institute of Book Art in Urbino at a very young age. After completing his studies, he moved to Milan, where he came into contact with intellectuals and artists, including Quasimodo, Buzzati, and Carrieri. His first success was linked to a literary work, the autobiographical novel Viva Gioconda!, the fruit of his military service. From 1938 to 1946, he lived in Ivrea, where he was art director of the magazine Tecnica e organizzazione, founded by Adriano Olivetti. He did not have much time to pursue his interests in painting, so he resigned and moved to Canzo, near Como. He chose a 19th-century spinning mill as his studio. He made his debut with two exhibitions (1946), where he presented himself under the pseudonym Francisco Queyo. He exhibited under his real name in 1949 at the Borromini Gallery in Milan, presenting Isole di statue (Islands of Statues) and Città di statue (Cities of Statues). He attracted the interest of Alfred H. Barr Jr., director of the MoMA in New York, who purchased one of his works for the museum. Life magazine featured "L'isola di statue" (Island of Statues) on its cover, which the artist had meanwhile submitted to the 1950 Venice Biennale. Between 1942 and 1952, at the request of industrialist Bruno Buitoni, he was busy preparing a cycle of ten paintings inspired by the events of ancient Perugia, later donated to the Umbria Region and now housed in the Sala Fiume at Palazzo Donini. In the same year, he created a canvas for a salon on the transatlantic liner Andrea Doria (which was lost following the shipwreck of 1956). Fiume's work included easel paintings, murals, frescoes, mosaics, and stage sets. He experimented with unusual materials: papier-mâché, wicker, and wire mesh for sculptures. It was in this decade, however, that painting took center stage. In 1953, he received a commission from Time and Life magazines for a series of works depicting an imaginary history of Manhattan. In 1967, he created the mosaic that decorates the apse of the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth. In 1973, in Ethiopia, he painted a group of rocks in the Babile Valley, a life-size model of a section of which was exhibited in the retrospective at the Palazzo Reale in Milan (1974). Between 1975 and 1977, he created murals in Fiumefreddo Bruzio in Calabria. Sculpture saw its consecration with the 1994 exhibition at the Artesanterasmo gallery in Milan and included large-scale works, such as the sculptural groups for the San Raffaele Hospitals in Milan and Rome (in stone) and for the Wine Fountain in Marsala (in bronze). In 1993, he traveled to Polynesia (to the places of his beloved Gauguin). In the theater field, he collaborated closely with La Scala, at the suggestion of Alberto Savinio, with the Rome Opera House, and the Teatro Massimo in Palermo. His works are held in the Vatican Museums (which include the African Mona Lisa and thirty-two other works), the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, the MoMA in New York, and the Pushkin Museum in Moscow.

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