was born in Paduli in 1948. He came to prominence in the early 1970s working across photography, drawing, and environmental installation - a practice that grew, over time, to encompass painting, sculpture, printmaking, set design, and filmmaking, as well as close collaborations with architects and designers.
His work is rooted in the myths and allegories of southern Italy, which he has made entirely his own - transforming them into a visual language that is layered, eclectic, and unlike anyone else's. In the 1970s he resisted the orthodoxies of the avant-garde, carving out space for a different kind of artistic thinking. He became one of the central figures of the Transavanguardia - the movement theorised by critic Achille Bonito Oliva - alongside Sandro Chia, Francesco Clemente, Enzo Cucchi, and Nicola De Maria. Through the 1980s his reputation extended well beyond Italy, with major appearances at the Venice Biennale and Documenta establishing him as a significant presence on the international scene.
He has continued to push at the edges of his practice ever since, moving into urban spaces and large-scale installation with increasing ambition. In the decades since, he has moved into urban spaces and monumental installation, bringing the same restless curiosity to an ever-widening set of contexts. Exhibitions in Beijing, at the Forte Belvedere in Florence, and across Europe and America - alongside public works such as Montagna del sale in Naples and Lo sciamano dell'acqua in Solopaca, near Benevento - give some sense of the scale on which he operates.
His work is held in many of the world's leading public collections, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and MoMA in New York, Tate in London, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Nationalgalerie in Berlin, the Albertina in Vienna, the Kunstmuseum Basel, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra, the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, and the Setagaya Art Museum in Tokyo.
