Arturo Calce Italian, b. 1955

Venetian artist, born May 5, 1955.

 

Arturo Calce is a multidisciplinary artist who uses spray paint on plexiglass plates. This tactile and intricate process involves administering layers of colour pigments from the back of the image, which will then appear at the end. These back-painted plates with sharp forms on a transparent support are technically and conceptually unique and allow for a rare circulation of light and energy. The painting, originally two-dimensional, opens up to a second dimension and takes on depth thanks to the transparent plate. 

His art, stylistically straddling pop art and expressionism, also approaches street art in its use of spray cans, while delineating itself as living art or interior art. 

Calce's style is steeped in symbolism, expressiveness and colour, which are reflected in his works. His art not only adapts to its surroundings, but even manages to blend into its surroundings. This stems from Arturo's reflective introspection of the cultures and countries he has visited in his life. Arturo Calce has travelled throughout Europe driven by a desire to learn and experiment, a desire that has led him to work in various fields such as fashion, design and interior decoration. 

Many of his works feature women "I am very fascinated by the female world. Each painting is an ever-changing emotion, like a volatile and changing perfume."

Calce first proposed plexiglass as immaterial painting in 1997 at Giovanni Granzotto's GR art studio. The turning point for him came 10 years later when he moved to Ibiza, where he began to make a name for himself with the Marta Torres Gallery, then an exhibition at El hotel Pacha, and three more exhibitions at the B12 gallery in the space of just four years.

Back in Treviso, the highly successful exhibition Arturo Calce - Behind a Reflection, Immaterial, at Ca' dei Carraresi in Treviso, where he exhibited 40 paintings on the museum's main floor.

Shortly thereafter, the exhibition in Berlin at Seven Stars Gallery and the historic café Pedrocchi in Padua. He also began a fruitful collaboration with La Banca Generali private: for more than five years his works have been exhibited in their Treviso, Rome and Padua offices.

In 2016 he made My Little Qube Flat in Venice, a retro-lit cube with 36 works, exhibited at Il Don Orione Artigianelli in Venice during the Architecture biennial.