Francesco Tabusso* (b. 1930), Turin by ancestry and for all his life, was born on the outskirts of Milan, in Sesto San Giovanni, where the family moved for a short time following his father, an engineer.

Having manifested early his passion for painting, he graduated from classical high school before embarking on a rigorous apprenticeship under the guidance of Felice Casorati. Far from being an epigone, Tabusso cultivates a love for the profession and reasoning on ancient masters at the school of the famous teacher, inheriting from Casorati the ability to transfigure reality, to restore its enchanted dimension, out of time, in a sort of "magical realism" with the tones of a fairy tale, completely personal.

By electing a rural world of even popular inspiration as a subject, Tabusso manifested from the beginning an authentic "vocation to the story", which led him to collaborate with some of the best-known names in Italian literature of the twentieth century, such as Piero Chiara, Dino Buzzati, Mario Soldati, Mario Rigoni Stern.

1954 is the year of the exhibition debut and the first participation in the Venice Biennale. In short, the artist is invited to the main national and international exhibitions, winning numerous awards. From 1963 to 1984, he combined teaching activities with painting: he taught ornate art at the Bergamo Art School, then figure at the Albertina Academy of Turin.

Also since 1963 Tabusso collaborates with Gian Ferrari Gallery in Milan, which will take care of the exclusive business for about thirty years, organizing in those years more than sixty personal exhibitions of the author in Italy and abroad.

By virtue of an art that has always celebrated creation and all its creatures with the simplicity and communicative power of a modern "primitive", he was called to create in 1975, for the Church of San Francesco al Fopponino in Milan designed by Gio Ponti, the monumental altarpiece Il Cantico delle Creature (96 square meters of painting), and subsequently the eight triptychs with the stories of the Saint.

Tabusso died in Turin in 2012 after about sixty years of tireless artistic activity.

* biographical information by the Francesco Tabusso Archive