SALVO

May 22nd, 1947 - September 12, 2015
Born in Leonforte, Italy

Salvatore Mangione, known as Salvo, was an Italian-born painter and conceptual artist. Known for his involvement with the Arte Povera Movement and associated with American Conceptual artists Joseph Kosuth, Robert Barry, and Sol LeWitt, his work ranged from reinvented copies of masters to carved marble to altered newspaper clippings. Born in Leonforte, his family moved to Turin in 1956, where he lived and worked for the remainder of his life. In the early 1960s, he began supporting himself by painting portraits, landscapes, and copies. After spending time in Paris amongst the student protests of 1968, he returned to Turin and became involved in the Arte Povera movement, where he met and was influenced by artists such as Boetti, Mario and Marisa Merz, Paolini, and Zorio. In the summer of 1969, he traveled to Afghanistan, inspiring him to create work around the search for the Self. Mounting his face onto images taken from newspapers, these works would become his first solo show at the Sperone Gallery in 1970. In 1973, he returned to painting, which he would continue to do until the end of his life. In this period, his works were greatly inspired by old masters and classic architecture. He considered these paintings in dialogue with the past. These works were shown in group and solo shows until March 2015. Retrospectives of Salvo’s work were held at the Mehdi Chouakri Gallery in 2016, the Norma Mangione Gallery in 2019, and the Gladstone Gallery in 2020. In 2016, the Archivio Salvo was founded in Turin.