Fiume Salvatore

Sicilian from 1915, Fiume is a painter, sculptor, architect, writer and set designer. At sixteen he entered the Royal Institute of Book Art in Urbino where he studied printing techniques: lithography, screen printing, etching and xylography. Having moved to Milan, he met artists and intellectuals such as Quasimodo, Buzzati and Carrieri with whom he became friends. The first success came with the novel Viva Gioconda! He is the art director of Technique and organization, Olivetti magazine, to which prestigious brands like Franco Fortini and Leonardo Sinisgalli collaborate. He established himself as a painter only when he left Olivetti to move to Como making a 19th century spinning mill his studio and his home. The first exhibition is in Milan at the Galleria Borromini, where the Islands of statues e City of statues they get great interest from critics. The triptych Isola di Statue, now in the Vatican Museums, earned him an invitation to the Venice Biennale and a cover of Life. Islands of statues are also created when Life and Time magazines commission him for a series of works depicting an imaginary history of Manhattan and the bay of New York, for their meeting rooms. In 1950 the architect Gio Ponti commissioned him a huge painting ( 48 x 3 meters) intended for the first class salon of the transatlantic Andrea Doria. Fiume creates a canvas with an imaginary Renaissance city full of Italian masterpieces from the 15th and 16th centuries. In 1956 the Andrea Doria sank off the coast of Nantucket, Massachusetts. After a traveling exhibition in Germany, he went to Ethiopia where he painted on a group of rocks using anti-corrosion marine paints. At the Royal Palace in Milan he then created a life-size model of a section of the Ethiopian rocks, occupying almost the entirety of the enormous Caryatids room. Features the African Mona Lisa, now in the Vatican Museums. In 1975 he revitalized the historic center of Fiumefreddo Bruzio, in Calabria, free of charge, with paintings and sculptures. In 1987 he visited Gauguin's places in Polynesia and donated one of his paintings to the Tahiti Museum, a tribute to the French master.
Officially debuts as sculptor only in '94 with an exhibition at the Galleria Artesanterasmo in Milan. His sculptures are in stone, bronze, resin, wood and ceramic. Some large ones such as the bronze statue at the European Parliament in Strasbourg. He also works as a set designer for Manuel de Falla's Vida breve, for Covent Garden in London, the Opera House in Rome, the maximum theater in Palermo. His literary works include three novels, numerous short stories, nine comedies, a tragedy and two collections of poems. The University of Palermo awards him an honorary degree in modern literature.
His works are located in some of the most important museums in the world such as the Vatican Museums, the Hermitage of St. Petersburg, the MoMA in New York, the Pushkin Museum in Moscow and the Gallery of Modern Art in Milan.