Ciro Palumbo

"Every painting has its nail”, Ciro Palumbo once declared. And his works, before even finding the right nails in a museum or gallery, are hung, ideally and visible, to the symbolism of Bӧcklin, the metaphysics of De Chirico, his brother Savinio, Morandi, the surrealism of Magritte and Dalí, and Pop Art.

He began painting at the threshold of thirty: uninhabited archipelagos of desires, boats teetering on sharp rocks, unmoored but intact, whales, elephants, pachyderms suspended like hot air balloons, comic book superheroes overlapping with the gods of Olympus in a shift of identity that is irreverent, boldly Pop.

For him, art is a poetic act and an inner wandering. His work grapples with Greek myths, the Odyssey of Homer and Dante, Cervantes' Don Quixote, and Leopardi's The Infinite.

Like Giacomo Leopardi, Ciro Palumbo is an immobile traveler. Many are his literary and artistic references and inspirations can be traced in his paintings. Ulysses sleeps, lying on a lifeboat. Arnold Bӧcklin's island, rugged and surrounded by spires and cypress trees, which has captivated many painters' gazes and echoes the Dantean cliff of Purgatory or an otherworldly Ithaca, is a great source of inspiration for Palumbo: he places there a ship, uncertain whether to set sail or look for a dock, binds flying boulders, entangles a cloud—perhaps smoke—and makes a crooked lighthouse emerge. Sometimes, there is no water around, only a dried-up seabed. Noah's Ark, a floating island, has enameled ceramic sides with no handholds or hatches, too high to reach the handful of houses on the bridge.

A modern Don Quixote, an anti-hero of disenchantment, yet irreducible, Ciro Palumbo, skeptical and ironic, knows very well what is dream and what is reality, living both with open eyes. And when he evokes the knight on a rocking horse or in a flaming windmill thrown into the sky, he is not portraying this: "One does not paint a subject”, he declares. "There are only mysteries. There are only questions."

Biography

Ciro Palumbo was born in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1965. He studied graphic design and lives and works in Turin as an Art Director in advertising agencies.

In 1994, he made a turning point: since then, he has dedicated himself to oil painting with glazing techniques. Recently, he has started sculpting in terracotta.

His dreamlike stages and ancient deities are openly inspired by symbolism, metaphysics, and surrealism. Palumbo revisits them with literary incursions and Pop influences.

He has participated in three editions of the Venice Art Biennale: in 2011, 2020, and 2022. His works are part of both public and private Italian collections.

In addition to Turin, he has exhibited, among other places, in solo and group shows in Rome, Naples, Florence, Pisa, Venice, Padua, Treviso, Asolo, Brescia, Bologna, Piacenza, Reggio Emilia, Matera, Bari, Monopoli, Varese, Perugia, Spoleto, Ravello, Ischia, Pompeii, Paestum, Nola, Catania, Monreale, Giardini Naxos, Taormina, Forte dei Marmi, Pietrasanta, Vinci, Rivoli, Alassio, Albenga, and Finalborgo.

Abroad, he has exhibited in France, Germany, Portugal, the United Kingdom, Romania, Switzerland, and the United States of America.