Emilio Isgrò
(Barcellona di Sicilia, 1937)
Artist, writer, poet, a man of the theater, essayist, Emilio Isgrò has always been an independent figure in the international artistic landscape. Starting from the Visual Poetry – of which he was the highest theoretician ' and most prominent exponent – the artist has begun to produce the Cancellature in 1964, exposing them in Italian and foreign galleries and museums. In 1979, at the Rotonda in Via Besana in Milan, he realized the large installation of Chopin for 15 piano. In 1985 he produced, commissioned by La Scala Theater, the multimedia installation La Veglia di Bach, followed in 1986 by L' ora Italiana at the Archaeological Museum of Bologna. In 1998 he realized the giant Seme d’ arancia, donated by the artist to his hometown as a symbol of the social and civil rebirth for the Mediterranean countries. He was invited to the Venice Biennale in 1972, 1978, 1986, 1993. In 1977 he won the first prize at the Biennale of Sao Paulo, Brazil. In 1998, the artist donated the gigantic Seme d'arancia (Orange Seed) to his hometown Barcelona in Sicily as a symbol of social and civil rebirth for the Mediterranean countries. Emilio Isgrò made his debut in London and Paris with the Tornabuoni Gallery, which opened two important exhibitions retracing the Maestro's artistic career. In 2011 the city of Palermo has dedicated to him a large retrospective exhibition in the Gothic-Catalan church of Santa Maria Spasimo. In recent years he has started research on the topic of insects, a metaphor of vitality and fruitfulness, starting with the installation Le Api della Torah built-in 2001 for the old publisher Belforte. Since 1956 he lives and works in Milan.
Among his solo and group exhibitions, we can mention: L'ora italiana (Civic Archaeological Museum, Bologna, 1986); The Artist and the Book in Twentieth-Century Italy (Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1992-1993) and (Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, 1994); Var ve yok (Taksim Sanat Galerisi, Istanbul, 2010); L'Italia che dorme (Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Rome, 2011); Seme dell’Altissimo (Expo Milano, Milan, 2015); Isgrò (Palazzo Reale / Gallerie d'Italia / Casa Manzoni, Milan, 2016); Emilio Isgrò (Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venece, 2019).
