GLAZED TERRACOTTA PANEL WITH GRAFFITI by FRANCO BRUZZONE – cm. 80×122 – 2012
Franco Bruzzone has a Degree in Modern Literature from the University of Genoa and is currently a teacher of Visual Art at high schools. In the 60’s he was both a painter and a ceramist in Albisola, where he became acquainted with Lam, Jorn, Lucio Fontana and later on, Calderara and Luigi Veronesi. His first exhibition dates back to 1961 at the Circolo degli Artisti in Albisola, where four of his drawings were selected and purchased by art critic Carlo Cardazzo. Since 1971 he has developed his own research on sign and in 1972 he had his works exposed at Unimedia art gallery in Genoa – catalogue edited by Paolo Fossati. In 1981 he hel a solo show at the Musée des Beaux Arts in La Chaux-des-Fonds (Switzerland) with a presentation by Paul Seyraz. His works are exposed at the Villa Croce Museum of Contemporary Art in Genoa, at the Bargellini Museum in Pieve di Cento (Bologna) and at the Civica Galleria of Modern Art in Gallarate (Varese). Between 1958 and 1968 he focused on surrealist automatism and since 1971 he has been following an inner quest for essentiality and neatness which has led him to unveil an originally unconscious “sign”, an archetypal shape progressively getting more and more simplified and geometrical. He loves experimenting with ceramics at Giovanni Poggi’s Ceramiche San Giorgio ceramic workshop and in 2011 a solo exhibition of his works was held at the Pinacoteca Civica (Municipal Picture Gallery) in Savona.