Francesco Calabrò, artist from Taormina, protagonist of the artistic life of the "Ionian Pearl" and character of great versatility, through a totally self-taught formation has come to achieve an uncommon technical mastery and an incredible skill in spacing indistinctly between an infinity of techniques and subjects, emerging in painting, graphics, design and scenography.

 

For Calabrò, the task of the artist is not simply to portray and reproduce the visible reality in a more or less realistic way, but to perceive and transmit, starting from the real figure, what lies behind it, thanks to the emotions that shapes and colors can evoke in the spectator. As in the dream with closed eyes, you travel in your unconscious, in the daydream you enter behind the surface of reality to perceive and discover its hidden truths: the artist is therefore the one who not only looks but "daydreams" breaking the "Maya veil", or the illusion of the real, to tell us the true hidden essence of things, reaching the "limit of the great secret" he can perceive, understand, and convey to humanity. Calabrò therefore thanks to his inexhaustible imagination and to the undisputed technical skills, is able to grasp the energies of creation and the ethical and moral truths underlined by reworking it into a personal form that ranges from hyperrealism to surrealism, succeeding in transforming even the smallest and seemingly insignificant aspects of everyday life in a work of art that can shake the soul's ropes and bring the spectator to a profound reflection on himself and the world.

 

The artists therefore, to quote E. A. Poe, "Agressi sunt mare tenebrarum, quid in eo esset exploraturi": "Have violated the sea of darkness, to explore what it is"; They immerse themselves in the darkness of the unconscious and the forces of creation, re-energizing loads of those gifts that can make them produce those "visions" that know to touch the deepest ropes of our self; and it's for this role, iconoclast and nonconformist, that the artists have often been judged "crazy and cursed", like all those who break the shapes of a blank casing to create new ones.

So in the production of Calabrò we find hyperrealistic depictions of objects and scenes of everyday life, landscapes or still life, which recall stories, memories, moments and emotions, to pass on sensual representations of naked women who strike for the harmony of shapes and the erotic charge understood as the driving force of life, until to reach surrealist and conceptual subjects, loaded with symbolism: the role of art and artist ("S. Sebastiano"), the representation of the new myths and the current social situation ("Allegory of the Myth"), criticizing a system now dominated by the race to wealth and individual success ("Mammon spell") and populated by actors on a stage in which they play a "social" part. The artist, in spite of this, also plays a role in this "show", often at the borders for his ability to strike deeply the weaknesses and miseries often hidden by the mask of bourgeois respectability and conventions.

 

A key role in the artistic production of Calabrò is the studied use of color, with lighted and uniform shades, capable of transmitting through its vibrations and wave frequencies, specific psychic and emotional effects on the spectator. The techniques range from oil painting to watercolor, Indian ink, pencil, charcoal, graphics, trompe l'oeil. Thus, the bright colors and perfection of the forms of Calabrò's work abduct and carry us to an "other" dimension, giving rise to a sort of "flow of consciousness" that frees and vivifies, bringing us back to the true essence of our individuality.
 

Calabrò has been exhibiting his works throughout Italy for decades, receiving numerous awards, and his works are present in private collections in Italy and abroad. Countless his exhibitions, including the most recent solo show "Art Miscellos" set up in the "Giovanni Di Giovanni" Hall of the Municipal Library of Taormina (2012), and the exhibition "Moments of Art" in the former church of the Carmine in Taormina together with the photographer Gaetano Castorina (2016). His work as a set designer was also remarkable, starting from the debut as assistant to the scenographies of the "Histoire de Camaralzaman" at the Teatro Greco in Taormina, which led him to collaborate with important international companies. In 2011, together with other well-known artists of Taormina, he founded the "Centaurea Art Group", through which he promoted various initiatives aimed especially at young people for the dissemination of art in all its manifestations.