This morning, Graziano Salerno, an eclectic and profound artist from Nuoro who had been battling illness for some time, passed away at the Nuoro hospital. His passing leaves an irreplaceable void in the city's artistic community and in the island's art world.
Only at the end of 2024 did Salerno receive significant recognition: on December 19th, his solo exhibition, titled Graziano Salerno. Without Poetry Under Any Case, opened in Cagliari at the Fondazione di Sardegna headquarters on Via San Salvatore da Horta. Curated by Cristiana Collu, the exhibition was part of the AR/S – Arte Condivisa platform and ran until March 30, 2025.
The exhibition featured approximately 200 works—watercolors, drawings, and the book Storia del cortile infinito—created in the second half of the 1980s and drawn from Dante Crobu's private collection. The exhibition was accompanied by a catalog published by Treccani, featuring contributions from prominent figures such as Annarosa Buttarelli, Ilaria Bussoni, Saretto Cincinelli, Alessandro Del Puppo, Antonello Tolve, and Jonathan Watkins. Critics and journalists emphasized the uniqueness of his artistic language: a visionary, surreal painting style, an intense fusion of narrative, poetry, drawing, and dream. A dreamlike universe that engages the visitor with evanescent images, symbols, suspended creatures, and an obsessive, almost automatic style reminiscent of surrealism.
Salerno was born in Nuoro on November 9, 1954. After some formative experiences in the area, he graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, where he was a student of Concetto Pozzati, with a thesis dedicated to Giorgio de Chirico.
A solitary and nomadic artist, he lived between Nuoro, Rome, London, Paris, and Berlin, but always returned to his hometown, which remained for him the center of a vibrant and visual inner world.
