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PAOLO CALIA

Episode II from 18 November to 11 December
Born in Sardinia, Paolo Calia began to paint very young, having his brother pose and his neighbors. At 16 he already receives a gold medal in a regional painting competition. He then goes to Venice at the Academy of Fine Arts where he switches from figurative painting to abstract painting and conceptual. He afterwards moves to Rome where the meeting and friendship of some artists from the capital made him discover a taste for performance and happening and tableaux vivants.

It was during one of these performances that he met Fellini. Follows a collaboration for the sets of some films – Fellini had a great influence on the development of his dreamlike imagination – Italian art critic Giulio Carlo Argan persuades him to move to Paris and gets him a scholarship corresponding the price of Rome.

Paris is love at first sight: he falls completely in love with this city – the influence of Cocteau and Surrealism also counted for him -. As opposed to sensuality and to the carnal side of Fellini that gives him an almost mystical evanescent dimension and he discovers the photo by making alive tableaux reproducing the paintings of the Louvre which meet a great success. The opportunity to meet and be fascinated by several fashion designers will make him want to stage their creations, photograph them and publish their photos in different magazines of fashion. He will also collaborate on the covers of Italian magazines such as Panorama and Espresso which will also ask him to illustrate stories by writers like Moravia …

Selected works

Exhibition views