Salvo was born Salvatore Mangione in Leonforte in the Sicilian province of Enna in 1947. In 1956 his family moved from Catania to Turin, which would become his adopted city. He began painting in the early 1960s and supported himself financially by selling inexpensive portraits, landscapes and copies of Rembrandt and Van Gogh. In 1963 he participated in the 121st Exhibition of the Society for the Promotion of Fine Arts with a drawing after Leonardo, an early indication of an interest in Renaissance reinterpretations he would sustain throughout his career.
From a young age Salvo was associated with the Arte Povera movement of 1960s Turin. Having attended the student protests in Paris in 1968, the artist returned to Turin inspired by rebellious fervour and began frequenting members of the Arte Povera movement, such as Giuseppe Penone and Germano Celant. He shared a studio with Alighiero Boetti during this period, and the two had a reciprocal influence on each other’s work. From a purely artistic standpoint, Salvo’s text-based practice showed more affiliation with conceptual art, specifically that of Joseph Kosuth, Robert Barry and Sol LeWitt, which he used to interrogate his own identity through overtly narcissistic gestures – one of his signature marble works reads simply ‘Io sono il migliore’ (I am the best). Indeed, the search for the self and for narcissistic self-satisfaction, alongside his relationship with the past and the history of culture, all became an essential part of his later research.
In 1973 Salvo made a crucial decision: he turned away from conceptual art and pivoted towards painting, a medium to which he would remain faithful for the rest of his career. His creations became colourful metaphysical landscapes and cityscapes reminiscent of not only Giorgio de Chirico, but also Raphael, Cosmè Tura and other 15th century masters. Temporality, as a subject and narrative, was introduced around the same time, manifesting itself in whimsical plays on titles, with many of his works named after seasons, months or times of the day.
Salvo has enjoyed a range of solo exhibitions, including at Museum Folkwang, Essen (1977); Mannheimer Kunstverein (1977); Kunstmuseum Lucerne (1983); Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (1988); Musée d’Art Contemporain, Nîmes (1988); Villa delle Rose, Bologna (1998); the Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art, Bergamo (2002); the Civic Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art, Turin (2007); and MASI – Museo d’Arte della Svizzera Italiana, Lugano, with Alighiero Boetti (2017). He also participated in documenta 5 (1972) and the 1976 and 1988 editions of the Venice Biennale.
Salvo passed away in 2015. As per his instructions, the marble inscription ‘Salvo è vivo’ (Salvo is alive) (1973) was turned over to reveal its verso ‘Salvo è morto’ (Salvo is dead). In 2016 the Mehdi Chouakri Gallery in Berlin organised the exhibition Salvo è vivo – a homage to the artist with works by Haris Epaminonda, Douglas Gordon and Morgan Tschiember, Jonathan Monk, Claudia and Julia Müller, Bernd Ribbeck and Francesco Vezzoli. In the same year the Salvo Archives were founded in Turin, which organised an exhibition of works by Jonathan Monk dedicated to the artist. In 2017 a double solo show for Salvo and Alighiero Boetti was organised at MASI in Lugano, curated by Bettina Della Casa, and the following year the exhibition L’Almanach 18 at the Consortium in Dijon hosted a room of works by Salvo. Two more personal exhibitions followed: at the Norma Mangione Gallery in Turin in 2019 and the Gladstone Gallery in New York in 2020.
