Artist Spotlight - Francesco Casolari — Contemporary Art Curator Magazine

Biography

My name is Francesco Casolari, I am from Bologna, a city in Northern Italy. I started engraving at the age of 6 under the guidance of my maternal grandmother. My first plates were drypoint, then around the age of 12 I started with etching. Immediately after high school, in my first years of university studies I was noticed by the galleries of my city and I started to do the first exhibitions.

Around the age of 20 I started to collaborate with more and more galleries around Italy and the first exhibitions in museums began. So far I have done 6 national tours and 12 world tours, which took place in art fairs, galleries and museums. I have two degrees: a degree in Fashion Design from the IUAV of Venice, a degree in Visual Arts from the University of Bologna and a master's degree in sociology from the University of Bologna.

Basket Jungle Club, 2022. Etching, 40x40cm

Artist Statement

Francesco Casolari was born in Bologna (Italy) in 1982. He started to engrave when he was 6 and his first creation lasted until the age of 12. Right from the outset of his activity, he has focused on urban settings, engraving medieval and Parisian scenes or opera houses. He resumed his activity at 19 and, during his university studies in architecture and fashion design, began to develop his own style: futuristic metropolitan scenes in which he imagines buildings with European architectural features of the past centuries, fast spaceships flying over them and clowns, dames and fictitious characters as inhabitants.

Billiards Jungle Club, 2022. Etching, 40x40cm

He tries to create utopian cities according to steam punk science-fiction theories. He aims at hyper-figurative representations, where fantasy and precision go hand in hand. His latest handmade etchings are 1x1.5 m and it took him 1300 hours of work, covered in several months, to make them. His works have been exhibited among many renowned collections both in Italy and America, and even at institutional level. He has collaborated with fashion companies and architects and, as textile designer, he has labelled accessories, t-shirts and objects

Bolo blackcherry 3000, 2022. Etching, 80x116cm

He took part in several exhibitions (museums and art galleries) and international fairs and is mentioned in various art catalogues. His works are shown in a great number of cities all around the world: Paris, Brussels, Berlin, Cologne, Vienna, London, Zurich, Montecarlo, Balearic Islands, Azores Islands, Thessaloniki, New York, Toronto, Los Angeles, Indianapolis, San Francisco, Miami, Caribbean, Toronto, Bogotà, Santiago del Chile, Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo, Boa Vista, Kathmandu, Tehran, Dubai, Oslo, Shenzen, Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Osaka. He have done more than 300 exhibitions around the world.

www.francescocasolari.com

Instagram: frengo_casolari