About the artist
Fabio Calvetti was born in Certaldo, near Florence, in 1956.
He graduated secondary and enrolled in the Florence Academy of Fine Arts.
After graduating in 1978, Calvetti would carry with him the ethical reasons for making art throughout his life. In the 1980s, he entered a phase of experimentation with techniques, materials and surfaces that lasted almost ten years. He abandoned oil on canvas, eliminated colour and embraced drawing, particularly with graphite, eventually reintroducing oils and acrylics to perfect a complex technique best suited to his needs. His themes are invariably human, with a focus on interior anaylsis and the difficulties of communication created by increasingly rapid social transformations.
His main artistic models emerged during this period: Hopper’s desolate and solitary view of contemporary man, and Sironi’s profound silences.
Calvetti’s new works were immediately praised, and he began a period of participation in group exhibitions.
In 1987 SIAC in Florence, included Calvetti in “Green Wave”, a selection of young Italian artists.
The ‘90s saw the painter’s first one-man shows, particularly outside Italy in Europe, Japan and the USA. It was then that he began his long-term relationships with the Shiraishi Gallery in Tokyo and the Schortgen Galerie in Luxembourg. In 1995, while staging a solo show on Réunion Island, he conducted a painting workshop at the Le Port School of Fine Arts. He participated in art fairs in Geneva, Amsterdam, Strasbourg, Ghent, The Hague and Kortrijk.
After this international experience, his work began to find an audience in Italy, resulting in major solo exhibitions in Certaldo (Palazzo Pretorio) and Genoa (Galleria Guidi) in 1997, Ercolano (Villa Campolieto, 1999) and Naples (Casina Pompeiana, 2000). His debut in Milan was with Galleria Artesanterasmo in 2003, where he would show again in 2006 and 2008.
Meanwhile, he continues to show at international Fairs and to stage important solo shows abroad, such as those in Paris in late 2006 and Sarasota, Florida in 2006 and 2008. Calvetti’s work has since become the focus of intense gallery interest, with prestigious one-man exhibitions at the City Art Museum of Kwangju (South Korea), the Shinjuku Park Tower in Tokyo, the Medici Gallery in Sarasota (Florida, USA), the Galerie Saint-Hubert in Lyon, the National Museum (Palazzo Venezia) in Rome, the Galerie Tournemine in Paris, the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana in Venice, and many other venues.
In 2017 he had personal exhibitions in Paris at Utrillo-Valadon Museum, Sofia (Seasons Gallery), Cannes (Galerie Vieceli) and Seoul (Seoul Art Center).