Adapted from XLV International Award the Muses, 2010, edited by Luca Plastino

The sculptor and painter Giuseppe Calonaci was born in 1931. He attended the School of Art during the post-war reconstruction in Tuscany. He formed in the climate of "MAC" (Concrete Art Movement), of "Forma 1 " and mostly of Florentine "Astrattismo Classico " and he elaborated the abstract-concrete lesson in a wide range of technological applications and formal solutions. He has carried out and fulfilled works with a full range projecting visions. His research has been marked by cycles, tagged by a title that explains the main theme. The reflection on the abstract language led Calonaci to indentify symbolic shapes such as the radiant circle, that is the principle generating energy. In 1955 he opened a factory of art enamels on steel, the S.I.V.A and from 1957, with the Florentine vanguards he worked in the classic abstractionism field.

He received many and important prizes and he founded two prizes himself. He has hold about seventy personal exhibitions all over the world and more than one hundred reviews. His work can be divided into ten periods and the present is called “Abstractionism & Citation”. Many important critics have written about him, as many catalogues, newspapers and magazines show.

Exhibitions made a success in many cities, such as: Florence, Milan, Siena, Caserta, Rome, Livorno, Arezzo, Palermo, Reggio Emilia, Bergamo, Ravenna, Venice, L’Aquila, Brescia, Padua, Viareggio, Prato, Cagliari, Bari, Varese, Catania, Modena, Spoleto, Naples, Carrara, Paris, Montreal, Ottawa, Tokyo, Hot Springs (Arkansas), Bali, Abilene (USA), San José, Costa Rica, Saudi Arabia, Avignon, Santiago, Ecuador, Rio de Janeiro, Olinda (Brazil), San Paolo, Mendoza (Argentina), Madrid, Bornem (Belgium), and even Egypt, Jordan, Syria, San Petersburg, India, Mexico, Cambodia, Libya.

His works are in many public places, in museums, in private collections, both in Italy and abroad. In Hot Springs, USA, in 1990 in occasion of his personal exhibition, he was decorated with Honorary Ambassador title of Arkansas by Governor Bill Clinton and Honorary Citizen of Hot Spings by the mayor. He became Accademico in Arts of Drawing of the prestigious Florentine Academy in 2007 and Knight of Italian Republic. In 2009 Calonaci hold a personal exhibition at Accademia delle Arte del Disegno gallery, Palazzo Pitti, Boboli Gardens and Palazzo Medici Riccardi, edited by Nicola Miceli, Enrico Crispolti e Corrado Marsan. In 2010 he won the international prize “Le Muse” in the symbol of Erato; among the many characters who won the same prize we remember: Henry Moore, Marc Chagall, Emilio Greco, Giacomo Manzù, Giò Pomodoro, Fernando Botero, Jean Michel Folon, Giuliano Vangi, Paola Crema.

Art historians who have treated the work of Calonaci: Lara Vinca Masini, Corrado Marsan, Fiamma Vigo, Piero Santi, Flavio Quarantotto, Enrico Crispolti, Giuseppe Marchiori, Enzo Carli, Eugenio Miccini, Raffaele De Grada, Franco Solmi, Tommaso Paloscia, Pierre Restany, Dino Pasquali, Giorgio Segato, Giulio Carlo Argan, Fortunato Bellonzi, Georges Sharbonnier, Nicola Micieli, Giorgio di Genova, Filiberto Menna, Giuseppe Mantelli, Ferruccio Ulivi, Luigi Zangheri, Paola Grifoni, Mario Lolli Ghetti, Cristina Acidini, Alessandro Cecchi, Luigi Paolo Finizio, Martina Corniati, Marco Meneguzzo, Cristina Crescentini, Omar Calabrese, Renato Barilli.