03.11.1953–present
Salvatore Garau
Salvatore Garau was born in Sardinia in 1953, graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence and in the late 1970s played drums in the band Stormy Six. From 1984 he exhibited as a visual artist: he painted dark “liquid” landscapes with dams and columns, covered building scaffolding with paintings and filled three Sardinian churches with water. He became widely known for the “invisible sculpture” “I Am” (2021).
Biography
In 2021 a sculpture that cannot be seen was sold in Milan. It was called “I Am” (Io sono), consisted, by the author’s design, of emptiness, and was sold together with that emptiness as a work by Salvatore Garau. It was shown on the American late-night show hosted by Stephen Colbert, in a segment devoted to the artist.
Garau was born on 3 November 1953 in Santa Giusta, in the province of Oristano in Sardinia; sources differ on the day of the month, and the exact date needs checking. He studied painting in Florence, at the Academy of Fine Arts, and graduated in 1974. Three years later he became the drummer of Stormy Six, a band that played progressive folk; when the group broke up, he took up the visual arts in earnest. He went back to music later: in 2013 he took part in the band’s reunion, and with Moni Ovadia he recorded the album “Benvenuti nel ghetto” (“Welcome to the Ghetto”). His first solo exhibition was held in 1984 at the Cannaviello gallery in Milan. The debut was noted by the critics Luciano Caramel and Enrico Crispolti. At that time the artist developed a language that critics call romantic: “liquid” landscapes in which dams, columns and pipes drawn in graphite stand at the centre of the composition, at first almost entirely in black and white. To these years also belongs an interest in projects for water surfaces: the volume “Arte Lago 90” (1990) is devoted to works created for a lake.
In the 2000s the scale grew. In 2003 Garau took part in the 50th Venice Biennale and showed work at the European Parliament in Strasbourg. In 2005 he painted an abstract work on a sheet of PVC of 200 square metres, which was hung over the scaffolding of a building on Corso Magenta in Milan. That same year his retrospective in Washington, D.C., prompted a series of episodes of the television programme White House Chronicle. In 2006, in the project “Ichthys” (“Sacro Stagno”, Sardinia), he made large pools on the floors of three churches in towns of the province of Oristano and stocked them with fish from nearby ponds. In 2009 a solo exhibition was held at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Saint-Étienne.
In 2012 he published the novel “Crudele amore mio” (“My Cruel Love”) as an e-book. Documentary films have been made about Garau’s painting: “The Canvas” (La Tela, 2017) and “Futuri affreschi italiani” (“Future Italian Frescoes”, 2018); the second won a special jury prize at an international film festival in Spain in 2021.
His works are in the collections of the Museo del Novecento and the Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea in Milan, the Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, the Galleria Estense in Modena, the museum in Saint-Étienne, the Caraffa Museum of Fine Arts in Córdoba (Argentina) and the collection of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. One painting, “Grigio con titolo” (“Grey with a Title”, 2003, acrylic on PVC), was bought by the ministry for the embassy in Brasília.
What counts as the work in the “invisible sculptures” I do not fully understand: the object itself cannot be shown, and what remains is a title, a certificate and the viewer’s imagination. It seems to me easier to grasp if one remembers his painting, where empty space was always the main subject.
Profile notes