Santo Allego, Il Filosofo, Partially Painted Terracotta, 2014

Description

Santo Alligo was born in 1948 in Roccalumera (ME). At 5, his family moved to Turin. After graduating from the … more Santo Alligo was born in 1948 in Roccalumera (ME). At 5, his family moved to Turin. After graduating from the Civic School of Ceramic Art becomes the assistant of the ceramist Anna Maria Carusi, where it helps her to create great patinated terracotta bas -reliefs. At sixteen he was employed as a graphic/illustrator at the Armando Testa advertising study, where he created, in 1967, the Hippopotamus Pippo for the carousels of the Lines diapers. In his short essay, Manuel Carrera, historian and art critic, writes: “Among the absolute protagonists of the Carosello born in the context of the head of the Testa, Pippo, the hippopotamus of the Lines, still remains one of the most memorable, at the point To be shaved the myth. To create it was a very young and talented Saint Alligo, then fresh from training between the Civic School of Art Ceramo and the study of Anna Maria Carusi. The realization of Pippo fits fully into his artistic process and can be defined as his first important experience as a contemporary sculptor [\.] of Pippo, however, in addition to the image, remains an unparalleled liveliness, a freshness of contents that is the happy and imprisonment fruit of the creativity of Santo Alligo ". Graphic designer and advertising illustrator, works for important Italian agencies and industries, from Ferrero to Esselunga, from San Pellegrino to Levi's. Create images in which he combines his idea and technical expertise, such as Facconi and Trisapore, by Federico Zeri judged "beautiful, indeed, sometimes splendid inventions", as in some posters: World Cup of Fencing of Turin, the Antiquar Association of Italy, Turin Calcio.

Since 1966 he began to model terracotta portraits characterized by introspective adhesion to the model, which represent, as Adriano Olivieri wrote, the production most intimately linked to the sensitivity of Alligo. This small corpus of works born in the sixties-seventies-with eyes wet at the sources of Arturo Martini and Gemito, long observed at the Museum of Civic Art of Turin-has something surprising in the way of guessing the tire that is erect Leather in the subjects to whom we imagine is missing the time to come true that we have already been translated into Crete. In an instant Alligo captures the life of the person and returns it to a rough man, modeled in a rustic way and which reaches a penetrating truth close to the veristic lining of the Etruscans and the Romans; Not to art born from an aesthetic ideal as in the Greeks but by reality as in the Latins. Exemplary in this sense are: the portrait of Pietro of 1975, with the gaze that pierces us and the languid eyelids that we find in certain faces of the Antonini lineage, that of Nino Vera as true are some faces of emperors who look like peasants of the Lazio Maremma , that of Mother Paola, an authentic Mater matter, or an- cum of his wife Mariolina, blocked in a seal of symmetrical beauty. Some sculptures depicting commonly used objects are of the late eighties: from Lacoste to the wool sweater, which Vittorio Sgarbi considers "sculptures that speak \. eternal objects with the soul".

The sculptures of Alligo (rigorously unique pieces) have been exhibited in numerous collective and personal: Terrecotte, Turin 2014; Anthological 1960/2014, Rome; Plastics urgencies, 2014/15, Milan; The Fringe of the Art World, 2017, Turin. The work "Sunday". Finally! He was exhibited at the 2015 Milan Expo in 2010. In 2010 he received the "Il Dream di Piero" Award for his artistic activity in the field of graphics, sculpture and for his passionate research and dissemination from the Academy of Fine Arts of Urbino in Urbino on the masters of illustration.

“Santo Alligo, although it is largely referring to the language of traditional figurative plastic, is perfectly contemporary artist. And it is contemporary as "personality", as a character, or as a person, meaning the term to Latin, in a stage sense. Alligo - we must underline it - is a natural character, animated by a special naiveté: at times boyish, at times sulphurous. His springs, without constructions and artifices is also natural; without sophistications and sophistications. You cannot fully know the work of Santo if your person is unknown, characterized by an impulsive theatricality, frank, frenetic. Also the heterogeneous intellectual dimension of Alligo, which betrays an irrepressible eclectic nature, is essential to understand the different joints of his sculpture, in which they come together with candid ease of Sicelioti archaisms, love apologized for illustration, comic and advertising suggestions , cinephile and bi-bilophile quotes, amused taste for the unsettling or provocative gimmick. His last exhibition presents a generous flower of terracotta, bronze, aluminum and wood works (sometimes with interventions in resins and plexiglas), made by the artist starting from the late seventies, with a specific focus on the unpublished production of the last three years. In the latest works Alligo has touched all the expressive strings that have always distinguished his agitated poetic universe, who came to an ideal synthesis of his conceptual and visual codes: from the laconic death of a chick to the surreal digital portrait, from the alienating reflection to the " Sunday". Finally! from the diptych to remain a child to the spectacular invisible man, from the superb bust in ignored terracotta and iron wire borders spined (loading of political-social implications) to the most enig- but a very complex bronze, suspended between ironic detachment and mystery Existential \. from the extraordinarily capable of saint every matter comes to life, in a continuous and compulsive dialectic that knows no re -rivers. We have already observed elsewhere how relevant the polymateric inclination of the latest creations of Alligo is, framing it in a speech of imitation of the reality already underway in the early nineties, without neglecting the projective scope of the aforementioned inclination, capricious reflection of a distant infantile desire for amazement and polymorphic enjoyment. (Armando Audoli).

Lately he was called to create a work to decorate a building in Turin; from the name of the stable "link", it created large aluminum panels cut into waterjet.

Since 1985 he has participated in numerous collectives including:
- from Tiziano to De Chirico. The search for identity, Palermo, Ascoli Piceno, Cagliari 2003/04;
- The Boom years, from reconstruction to the dispute. Art in Piedmont from 1946 to 1968, Bra 2012;
- The game in art & of art. Art in Piedmont from the twentieth century to today, Bra 2013;
- contrasts, Turin, 2013;
- Artists of Sicily, Favignana, Palermo 2014;
- The Treasury of Italy, Expo Milano 2015;
- Expo Italian Art, Varedo 2015;
- from Giotto to De Chirico. The hidden treasures, Salò 2016;
- New proposals, Galleria il Ponte, Turin, 2017

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