Salvatore Provino was born in Bagheria (Palermo) in 1943. In 1962 he moved to Rome, where he was influenced by the contrast between the ancient peasant dimension of his town of origin, and the lively life of a large town. His first encounters with the Roman art scene induce him to move from his figurative art of matter, towards a more expressionist, rather than neorealist, model. In the same period he was among the founders of the group “Il Girasole”, which took a lively part in the national artistic debate of those years. As his absence from Bagheria got longer, Provino exasperated in his memory all the contradictions of his town of origin, and his heritage became a macabre ruin that needed to be destroyed with colour. In 1970 Salvatore Provino chose to express his hidden anxiety representing the human figure. After travelling to Peru, and visiting the Nazca valley in particular, where he was attracted by the magic symbolism used by the Incas, he began to recreate in his paintings an extraordinary comparison between geometry and philosophy, between visible and invisible. His mixing, excavating, overlying the pictorial matter, resulted in the varying of transparencies, between mysterious shadows that emerge from magma and fire. Light illuminates his paintings, becoming the most important character, a generator of solid figures full of candour. Salvatore Provino currently lives and works in Rome.