FRANCO CROCCO - Italy -

CONTACTS: Office: via campetto dei macellari 21 00049 Velletri (Rome)
Tel. 06 7964663 – 06 9629503 Mob. 347 8536399 e-mail: croccoeffe@hotmail.it
www.francocrocco.com

Time paths

The first autumn frost

Mixed media on canvas 60 x 80 cm

Mixed media on plywood cm 92.5 x 126

Mixed media on plywood

diptych 125 x 125 cm

Shocking pink

Mixed media on plywood 105 x 125 cm

The Poor Harlequin

Sacred & Profane (Artist’s signature)

Mixed media on plywood Cm 50 x 100

Mixed media on plywood 92 x 100 cm

HIS BIOGRAPHY

Franco Crocco, painter and engraver, born in Rome in 1964, lives and works between Ciampino and Velletri (Rome). The son of an artist (his father Alfredo is a well-known painter), he has been active in the visual arts for over 25 years, and has built up a remarkable wealth of artistic experience that has led him to change the way he lives and conceives art.

He graduated from the Art Institute of Ciampino in 1983 and from the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome in 1988, and studied under Enzo Brunori and Duilio Rossoni. He was Educational Director of the “San Giuseppe” Private Art High School in Grottaferrata (Rome) from 2000 to 2007, where he also taught life drawing. He currently teaches Painting Disciplines at the State Art Institute of Rome III and Pomezia (Rome). He is also a lecturer at the Schools of Arts and Crafts of the Municipality of Rome, where he taught Drawing and Painting at the “Ettore Rolli” School and currently teaches Engraving Techniques at the “School of Ornamental Arts”.

After various figurative paths (certainly worth recalling the solo exhibition set up in 2000 in Marino (Rome), in the halls of Palazzo Colonna, entitled “Homage to Giovanni Segantini”), his research focuses on the formal elaboration of colour and the relationships that shape visual perception, through a visual representation that awakens emotion in the viewer.
The use of humble materials, assembled with more traditional ones, evokes visual suggestions that go beyond the boundaries of figuration. The surface is thus enriched with a tactile fascination that, through the roughness of matter, emerges triumphantly with its own strength. As Mariano Apa (2007) writes “(…)The clumps and material agglomerates seem to expand in the calm of the marshy thinning of the brushstroke, which deliberately stumbles, falters, gets caught in the materials used”.
“In Franco Crocco’s latest production – writes Manlio Della Serra (2008) – the organisation of the fields of colour, the balance of voids and protrusions are only some of the elements that govern the achievement of very high expressive difficulty, and everything seems to refer back to the personal formalisation fixed over long years of study.”

His engraving work, after an intense figurative period, is currently developing an autonomous path of research and experimentation linked to contemporary themes rich in formal suggestion.

In addition to Brunori, the models for this artistic renewal are the works of Afro and Burri.

CURRICULUM

Among the most significant exhibitions of recent years we recall those at Galleria Spazio Giacobbe (Milan, 1997), at the Galleria Comunale Borghese in Mentana (Rome, 1997), at the Galleria Comunale in Casarano (Lecce, 1997), at the Roof Garden of the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome (1998), at Galleria L’Agostiniana (1999), at the Sale del Bramante in Rome (2000), at the “L. Montanarini” Center in Genzano (Rome, 2001), at the Scuderie Aldobrandini in Frascati (Rome, 2001 and 2004), at the Cloister of San Pietro in Reggio Emilia (2002), at the Civic Museum of Contemporary Art in Albissola Marina (Savona, 2002), at Palazzo Miceli in S. Vincenzo la Costa (Cosenza, 2003), the Civic Museum of Marino (Rome, 2004), the d’AC – Municipal Gallery of Contemporary Art in Ciampino (Rome, 2005), at the Municipality of Pannarano (BN), the Circolo Artistico in Lido di Jesolo (VE), the Cittadella dei Musei in Cagliari, the Poliedro Gallery in Trieste (2006). In 2007 he exhibited his engravings at the municipalities of Vigonza (Pd) and Nova Milanese (Mi). In February 2007 he set up an anthological exhibition of his abstract works at the rooms of the Ancient Printing House of the Abbey of Grottaferrata (Rome), entitled “The control of the unforeseen”, with a critical essay by Mariano Apa. He is a member of the National Association of Italian Engravers of Vigonza (Pd). In 2008 he exhibited his works at Galleria L’atrolabio in Rome and at the Parisi Valle Civic Museum of Contemporary Art in Maccagno (Va).

He has also exhibited his works in France, in the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic, in Lithuania, Portugal and Austria. Countless are his participations in national and international painting and engraving competitions in Italy.

Exhibition update 2008 – 2009:

2008
- Maccagno (VA) - Parisi Valle Civic Museum, “Acquisitions 2008” – Under the Patronage of the Lombardy Region and the Province of Varese. Coordination: AdActa Association, curated by C. Rizzi. Catalogue in the exhibition.
- Oporto (Portugal) - Geraldes Da Silva Gallery, Contemporary Art Group Exhibition.
- Vienna - Am Roten Hof Gallery, “Made in Italy II” Prize, curated by G. Klebacz.
- Agrigento - “Agrigento Arte 2008 – Signs of Time”. Contemporary Art Fair, coordination Centro Studi Erato. Catalogue in the exhibition.
- Aprilia (LT) – Department of Culture, “Alfredo & Franco Crocco – Chromatic Variations – Between Naturalism and Abstraction”. Sala Manzù, solo show. Presentation by M. Della Serra.
- Guidonia Montecelio (RM) – Department of Culture, “Air, wind, flight: ethereal dimensions of art”, curated by L. Rubini. Cloister of the former Convent of San Michele. Catalogue in the exhibition.
- Vigonza (PD) – Department of Culture “2008 Italian Graphic Art”, Castello dei Da Peraga, curated by the National Association of Italian Engravers of Vigonza (PD).
- Rome – “Il trittico” Gallery, “Italian Engravers”, curated by S. Fattibene.

2009

- Rome – Associazione Culturale Galleria Utopia, “Exhibition of Artists for the World March and Nonviolence”. Curated by F. Cordoba and D. Leoni.
- Frascati (RM) – Department of Culture – “T & T = A “, Scuderie Aldobrandini. Catalogue in the exhibition.

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