Salvatore Emblema biography


Salvatore Emblema pittore

Salvatore Emblema was an Italian painter and artist. He was born in Terzigno, in the province of Naples, in 1929. He attended the Artistic High School first and the Academy of Fine Arts then in Naples. After finishing his studies, he moved to Rome where he met the poet and writer Ugo Moretti . The latter presented him to Monsignor Francia, head of the Vatican Museums, who would act as an intermediary with Pope Pius XII for the commission of a portrait of His Holiness.
In 1955 he he moved for a short period to New York where he frequented Rothko and Pollock and where he met Carlo Giulio Argan with whom he began a relationship of respect and collaboration. Carlo Argan brings him back to Lucio Fontana's experience, whose paintings went beyond the canvas thanks to cuts that the artist engraved on the canvas itself and throws him a challenge which consists in creating paintings that go beyond the canvas without being pierced.
In 1958 Salvatore Emblema returned to Rome and, having few economic resources, began painting on a bag of canvas, building the frames himself. In preparation for an exhibition in Turin and with Argan's words still clearly in mind, the artist begins to remove the canvas so that the space behind it shines through; in short, he held it making the space behind the canvas come to life. The period of deweaving for which the painter is best known begins.
In 1969 he was offered the chair of painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome which the artist, due to his shy character, he refuses, leading him to take refuge in Terzigno where he will remain for the rest of his life.
In 1981 during the artist's exhibition at the Palazzo del Ridotto in Cesena, Giulio Carlo Argan chooses some paintings to exhibit at the Uffizi Gallery, where they are still preserved. In 1982 he participated in the XL Venice Biennale. He continued to exhibit in group exhibitions in Italy and abroad until his death in 2006.