Edited by Archivio Salvo and NERO Editions
Io sono Salvo: Works and Writings 1961–2015 edited by Archivio Salvo and NERO Editions.
Io sono Salvo is a monograph conceived as a self-portrait: a story of the artist’s practice through his works and words. A collection of writings, including the treatise On Painting, unpublished texts, and various interviews given over the years, complements a vast selection of his works, presented in chronological sequence.
Born in Leonforte, in Sicily, Salvo moves to Turin in 1956, where he starts carrying out a conceptual research, first akin to that of Arte Povera and of artists such as Sol LeWitt, Robert Barry and Joseph Kosuth, with whom he comes into contact. 1973 was the year of his “return to painting”, a language he had practiced in the very first years of his training and that, at the beginning of the 1970s, was to be considered unconventional. Salvo does not conceive painting in contrast to the language of conceptual art, and through a fifty-year career, he is able to carry on a personal research, in constant dialogue with the past.
This autobiographical account is introduced by two critical texts who take a new look at Salvo’s work. Bob Nickas’ essay delves into the artist’s research through the analysis of the treatise On Painting. Elena Volpato’s essay rereads Salvo’s entire career from the experience of Projekt ‘74, in Cologne, to emphasize the intellectual and conceptual nature of all his subsequent pictorial production.
In the appendices, a chronology edited by Sara De Chiara reconstructs Salvo’s life through the history of his exhibitions, complemented by a vast visual section of archive materials, i.e. photographs and documents.
The monograph, published by NERO Editions, was realized thanks to the support of the Italian Council (tenth edition, 2021), a programme for the international promotion of Italian art of the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture. We would also like to thank for their support the galleries Gladstone and Mehdi Chouakri, and all the people who collaborated with us on this journey.
The volume, published by NERO Editions, will be presented throughout the month of May in a series of international venues, together with the cultural partners and some of the authors who took part in its realization.
Book launches
May 17, 2023, 3pm (CEST): Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (Depot), Rotterdam
I am looking at my burning candles in front of me. With: Lisa Andreani, Francesco Stocchi.
May 18, 2023, 6pm (ET): Center for Italian Modern Art (CIMA), New York
On Salvo / De Salvo. With: Giorgio Di Domenico, Nicola Lucchi, Bob Nickas. Registration is required at the following link. The cost of the ticket is 10 USD.
May 22, 2023, 6pm (CEST): GAM, Turin
Io sono Salvo. Conference dedicated to the first comprehensive monograph on the artist’s work. With: Pier Giovanni Castagnoli, Elena Volpato.
May 24, 2023, 6pm (CEST): Magazzino Italian Art (online)
Artists’ Writings: The Case of Salvo and Barbara T. Smith. With: Lisa Andreani, Pietro Rigolo, moderated by Roberta Minnucci.
A final presentation will be held in September 2023 at the Centre d’Art Contemporain in Geneva.
