Franco Garelli, artist 1909 - 1973

Franco Garelli is a sculptor and painter known and appreciated throughout the world. He was born in 1909 in Diano where his father, Doctor Mario, was a medical doctor. The family lives at the Rocca where, for fun, he begins to build small figures with water-soaked earth. Right behind these houses he will begin to create increasingly larger figures using earth as the main raw material. The family later moved to Turin where he combined his work as a doctor with that of an artist. From earth he will move on to metal and other plastic materials for sculptures, even large ones. Starting from a successful exhibition at the Venice Biennale in 1954, he exhibited his works all over the world: Caracas, Osaka, San Francisco, Brussels, New York, Gothenburg, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Antwerp. And then again in the 1960s in Mexico, Prague, Munich as well as numerous collective exhibitions in Italy, Portugal and Germany. A career in continuous evolution with the continuous search for new suggestions, highly appreciated by international critics.

Struck by an incurable disease, Garelli died in Turin on 22 April 1973.