Francesco Musante

He graduated from the artistic high school and then decided to apply for the Philosophy University in Genoa, attending, at the same time, painting course at the Academy of fine arts of Carrara.
By the 1960’s he had already made his first artistic experiments, mostly about colours and abstractionism, and had started to participate to group exhibitions, artistic contests and prizes. His works of this period and of the early 1970s are influenced by the north American artistic movements, such as Pop art and Rauschenberg’s Combine Paintings.

From the 1980s he moved his interest to graphic and watercolours: the second ones in particular became very important, as watercolours allow him to experiment and give to the image a sort of fantasy atmosphere, as it is possible to notice in his characters, which seems to be taken from a fairy world and then put in a world full of objects and words.

Flying girls with a heart in their hands run after coloured clouds; male figures that run away from colourful rain made of little hearts. Sometime a suspended wire becomes a symbol between reality and fantasy or between day and night. That’s why these small hearts, that seems to fall from the sky, change into symbols of universal love, the kind that is able to contaminate everything and change the destiny of the world.

In Musante’s art reality, fantasy, no-sense and mystery are mixed together in an almost surreal world.