Salvo

Salvatore Mangione (Leonforte 1947 – Torino 2015) is better known as Salvo.
After spending his childhood in Sicily, Salvo moved to Turin in 1956 and in 1963 he participated to the 121st exhibition of the “Società Promotrice di Belle Art” with a drawing after Leonardo. During these years he devoted himself to the copying of works by great masters such as Rembrandt, Van Gogh and Chagall and supported himself by selling them at a low price. Near the end of the 60’s he got in contact with the artistic movement “Arte Povera” along with some important American conceptual artists like Joseph Kosuth, Sol LeWitt and Robert Barry. In 1970 he exhibits at the Galleria Sperone in Turin a series of photomontages in which he replaces with his face images from newspapers. At the same time, he creates a series of marble slabs with engravings of words, phrases or names (for example “Idiot”, “I am the best” and “Salvo lives”) and several ironic and provocative works where he writes his name in neon letters. In 1973 he returns back to traditional painting with his works know as “D’après” where he simplifies old master’s paintings and often adds himself in those works. In 1975 he began the series of Italie and Sicilie putting the names of artists and writers of the past next to his own name, on the background of abstract forms and symbols representing their places of origin. In the following years, he tackles mythological and archaeological themes (in particular, the ruins and testimony of past civilizations assimilated to the landscape) with a predilection for portraying places. Since the ’80s his reputation was consolidated at international level with large retrospectives dedicated to him in Ghent, Lucerne and Lyon. Since then his exhibitions continues with great success in Italy, Europe and the United States