Salvatore Fiume

FIUME SALVATORE

Salvatore Fiume (Comiso 1915 - Milan 1997) is an artist at 360 degrees. During his life he has been painter, sculptor, architect, writer (he has published novels, short stories, tragedies, comedies and poems) and stage designer (he has collaborated with the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, with the Covent Garden in London and with the Teatro Massimo in Palermo). After training at the Royal Institute of Art of the Book of Urbino, he moved to Milan where he formed relationships with important intellectuals of the time, including Quasimodo and Buzzati. His beginning is in Ivrea as Art Director, but his real passion is painting, so he moves to Canzo where he practices this discipline full time, along with some experiments in sculpture and architecture. On the occasion of his first exhibition, in 1949 at the Borromini Gallery, he obtains a great success and is noticed by the critics; from this moment on he begins to publish his works on art magazines, catalogs and public commissions. He travels and exhibits all over the world. He assimilates uses, customs, cultures and atmospheres of every place where he stays and proposes it in his works. In 1993 he went to Polynesia to visit and be influenced by the places where he lived and created great masterpieces, the famous Paul Gauguin. The works of Salvatore Fiume's maturity are strongly influenced by Gauguin's art and exotic atmospheres: warm tones, strong chromatic contrasts, simple shapes, fantastic themes and almost metaphysical settings. The protagonists of this creative period are shapely and sensual Mediterranean and Oriental women. Today the works of Salvatore Fiume are preserved in important private collections and museums in Italy and abroad, including the Vatican Museums, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, the MoMA in New York, the Pushkin Museum in Moscow.