Salvatore Emblema (Naples 1929 - Naples, 2006) The artistic itinerary of what would become one of the historical masters who addressed the problem of Spatialism began in 1948 when he executed a series of collages using dried leaves and constructing portraits through chromatic modulations. Material research follows with the use of stones and minerals collected on the slopes of Vesuvius, which he uses to materialize figurations. Read the full biography
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Salvatore Emblema (Naples 1929 - Naples, 2006) The artistic itinerary of what would become one of the historical masters who addressed the problem of Spatialism began in 1948 when he executed a series of collages using dried leaves and constructing portraits through chromatic modulations. Material research follows with the use of stones and minerals collected on the slopes of Vesuvius, which he uses to materialize figurations. A scholarship and enrollment at the Corallo School of Torre del Greco made him appreciated by the teachers, so much so that he was enrolled at the State Institute of Art in Naples, but did not complete his studies. Instead he goes to Rome where he meets Carlo Levi and Ugo Moretti. The artistic environments of the capital influenced his pictorial direction. In 1956 he held his first solo exhibition in Rome at the San Marco Gallery and began to intensify his experimentation with the use of sackcloth for his works. At the same time, the world of cinema and fashion became interested in his activity: he collaborated with Fellini and designed patterns and fabrics for the designer Schubert. Still very young he moved to the United States, where he assiduously attended the studios of Pollock and Rothko: from the former he learned the freedom of the creative gesture, while the latter influenced his colors and transparencies. He establishes a fertile relationship with the critic Argan who will become his great admirer and exegete. Through his precious friend, he gets to know Lucio Fontana's material experimentation, and understands that to achieve the essentiality of things one must remove and not add. Thus he eliminates the color by favoring the canvas alone and, subsequently, weaves it, removing some threads and allowing us to glimpse behind it that space that is no longer "dead" but participates in the painting. In 1972 he refused, due to a choice of creative freedom, the teaching chair of painting offered to him at the Academy of Fine Arts of Catanzaro. With humility and stubbornness he continued his research which, finally, received a definitive and official consecration: in fact, they open the doors of the Venice Biennale, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Uffizi in Florence, the Palazzo Reale in Naples, while his works of both painting and sculpture are purchased by the most important contemporary art collections both public and private.
