Giuseppe Salvatori was born in Rome in 1955. His artistic research is a love letter to and reimagining of the avant-garde Italian art of the 20th century. The originality of his work resides in a loose affiliation with a plethora of modern movements, without adhering too strictly to any of the rules. And yet, unlike much of postmodern art, his perspective on the past is not cynical, but genuine and metaphysical. In the 1980s his hybrid aesthetic propelled him to the forefront of the Nuova Figurazione movement.
While drawing on a variety of sources, the abstract and the figurative combine in depictions of conventional subjects like architecture, still life and landscape. Calligraphy flows naturally from his linear work, cartography is evoked by mapping, and symbolism is heavily present in the form of signs, icons and other ideograms. The juxtaposition of subjects conveys a contrast between nature and culture, while the generally free composition of colour, motif and image is reminiscent of European surrealism.
In the late 1980s Salvatori switched to working in tempera. This transition not only enabled him to produce on a much larger scale, it also saw him move away from flat monochrome paintings to combine opaque and glossy colours and produce a visual and structural sense of depth. Works of this kind were first presented at the Venice Biennale in 1990.
More generally, his career has been punctuated by regular exhibitions. In 1980 he participated in two public exhibitions on the latest trends in contemporary Italian art: i Nuovi-Nuovi at the Municipal Gallery of Modern Art in Bologna and Italiana: la nuova immagine at the Loggetta Lombardesca in Ferrara. Prior to his appearance in Venice in 1990, he exhibited at the Ankara Biennale in 1986.
Salvatori lives and works in Rome.
