Flavio Costantini biography

- FLAVIO COSTANTINI PAINTER

 

Flavio Costantini was an Italian painter and illustrator. He was born in Rome on September 21, 1926.

After graduating as a Long Course Captain, he served in the Navy and from 1951 to 1954 sailed with the Merchant Navy. During this period, he became passionate about Franz Kafka and began illustrating some of his novels.

Having landed permanently, he settled in Rapallo with his family and began designing and drawing fabrics in Santa Margherita Ligure. Later, he started collaborating with the Firma graphic studio in Genoa and created illustrations for the corporate magazines of Shell, Esso, and Italsider.

In 1959, after a trip to Spain, he created a series of oil paintings on canvas dedicated to bullfighting. Flavio Costantini was self-taught and throughout his artistic career avoided any association with artistic currents and movements. Between 1963 and 1979, he produced about sixty tempera paintings dedicated to the history of anarchism, particularly focusing on major attacks carried out in Italy, France, Spain, and the United States.

In 1978, he illustrated the volume Cuore by Edmondo De Amicis for the Olivetti gift editions outside commercial distribution, curated by Giorgio Soavi.

In 1980, he began creating the first of a long series of tempera and collage portraits of writers and philosophers, returning to his first source of inspiration, namely literature.

During this period, he regularly created illustrations for Corriere della Sera, La Repubblica, Panorama, L’Espresso, and other national publications.

From 1982 onwards, he dedicated himself to producing various cycles of works, from the killing of the Romanovs, to the sinking of the transatlantic Titanic, up to one of his last research themes on the events and protagonists of the French Revolution. In 1986 he exhibited at the XLII Venice Biennale, Art and Alchemy, curated by Arturo Schwarz. 

Flavio Costantini died in Genoa on May 20, 2013.