Jean Calogero

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The following biography is from the archives of askART.

Calogero was born August 20, 1922 in Catania, Sicily.  Self-taught, because his parents could not afford to send him to the fine arts schools, he did  follow the course of artistic high school in his hometown.  First exhibitions in 1945 in Sicily and Rome were very successful.   He arrived in Paris in 1947 and studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. 

He is best known for his Surrealist and genre works.  His paintings are dreamlike and visionary.  They travel to an infinite space created by the artist through his memories,  the sky and the sea so dear to him.  In his paintings there are a few common themes: the masks with their dual dimensions that hide or shows only what you want, the profiles of the women, and the horsemen, drawn as the Sicilian tradition requires. 

He exhibited at the Gallery Hervé in 1951 and the following year he went to New York to present his show, then in 1953 he was invited to Los Angeles, where he returned two years later, and from where he regularly exhibited his works, and San Francisco.  

In 1954, Maximilien Gauthier devoted a book to him published by "The Gemini."  The first exhibition in Japan was in 1965.  He was awarded the Grand Silver Medal by the City of Paris in 1957.  Calogero had countless exhibitions in Paris, in the fifties, plus the American exhibitions in New York (Associated American Artists, 1952), Los Angeles (James Vigevano Galleries, 1953) and then later in Japan and in major galleries in Italy.

He lived and worked for many years in Paris and Italy. He died in 2001.

Information provided by Ralph Blunt.