Pippo Altomare

Oct 11, 2020

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Serie aquiloni, 70X50 cm, acrilico su carta, 2020

Pippo Altomare was born in Nicosia on April 8, 1958, and currently lives in Sicily (Sperlinga).

He attended the State Institute of Art and the Academy of Fine Arts in Catania and, attracted by American artistic phenomena, in 1977, he stayed three months in New York, where he had the opportunity to visit art galleries and museums.

In a second trip, which will take him to Miami (Florida) a few years later, he went further into commercial strategies and techniques of exhibition space design.

In 1987 he moved to Rome, where, for almost 10 years, he worked as secretary and artist at the Banchi Nuovi Art Gallery. It was there that he had the opportunity to get to know and frequent the most important Italian and foreign artists, sharing with them work experiences, which allowed him to progress in the knowledge of the pictorial-plastic traditions related to creativity.

In his experimentations, he has crossed, with results of great interest, sculpture and performance art; but the terrain he prefers is that of painting.

Composizione 3, 200x245 cm, acrilico su carta, 2019

Here he makes the surface pulsate with formal elements (many times linked to the world of nature, often to that of fantasy), which emerge from the depths, to establish themselves within the canvas or on paper as authentic presences.

Since 1984 he has participated in numerous exhibitions - solo and group exhibitions - in Italy and abroad, and there are several museums, public collections and places of interest that host his works on a permanent basis.

Many people have written about his work, including Massimo Bignardi, Enrico Crispolti, Giorgio Di Genova, Paolo Giansiracusa, Franz Kröger, Achille Pace, Ludovico Pratesi...

In recent times, he has established a relationship of creative synergy with Luigi Polillo, who expresses deep admiration for the artist’s work.

These are his words, referring precisely to the project developed for ItaliaImballaggio which, according to Polillo, «Starts from a careful reflection on the works on paper by Altomare, which fits into an international scenario of contemporary painting, taking shape in an abstract perspective. Its modus operandi is characterized by a refined stylization of forms and geometric elements, and by a stripping of the surface, which leads man to a careful reflection on the origin of the vital nucleus, intervening directly on wooden supports, with a powerful gesture and lively coloring, making explicit emotional charges centered on the essence of the sign. In the categories of packaging, wooden packaging and not only, intended to contain and protect the product from external factors during transport, the coating of the container becomes an artistic product while maintaining its industrial construction quality unchanged».