Daniele Fissore's Biography

Daniele Fissore was born in 1947 in Savigliano (Cuneo). He began his artistic career as self-taught, which has now lasted for over forty years. After completing his classical studies, he briefly attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Turin (1966), then left painting for a few years to devote himself to deepening the techniques of drawing. In 1975 he took part in the X Quadriennale in Rome and in 1976 in the “Biennale del Disegno” in Milan.

A constant evolution of the first pictorial themes (see the “Telephone booths“, the “Oppositions ‘, the” Recognitions’) investigated with an in-depth analysis of strong photographic inspiration, leads him to the human figure and portrait.

In 1980, Fissore moved to London, where his works convinced British critics and earned him the concession of a London studio from the British government. Here he develops and perfects the series of “Picnics” (exhibited at the “House Gallery” in 1981), which anticipate subsequent experiments aimed at studying the relationship between the figure and the landscape, with people caught from behind, lying on grass, and depicted in blow-ups with a photographic rather than pictorial taste. Yes, because Fissore painted so well that he could be considered a hyperrealist. Instead he was in fact a surrealist, a lyrical dreamer who framed nature and the landscape always trying to go beyond the visible.

Back in Italy, he intensified his exhibition activity, with numerous personal and collective exhibitions in various Italian galleries, orienting his pictorial choices to the theme of “Green“.

Fissore links his research to the La Bussola Gallery in Turin, inaugurating an intense artistic and professional partnership. In 1993, with a personal exhibition dedicated to “Large formats“, he unveiled the methods of his work, combining carbon sketches with major editions. In the same context he presented paintings on the new theme of the “Sea“, through which he explores and deepens the emotional and imaginative aspects of the landscape, to the point of estranging it from its materiality, to return it in almost abstract passages, with a plot of waves, lights, reflections. Vast expanses of water captured in their almost static and cobaltic beauty, with imperceptible waves. A landscape serenity that reflected the serenity of a generous and joyful man, and of an artist who was in fact self-taught.

In 2001 he interrupted his exhibition activity and continued his pictorial research, renewing his interest in the “Grays’ of the beginning (” Telephone booths “,” Opposizioni “) and exhibited in 2005, in the exhibition La Via del Sale at Castello di Prunetto, in Alta Langa, with the titles “Video“, “Gray Green“, “Cieli Nuvolosi“.

In 2006, on his way back to the original subjects, he also resumes the theme of the monuments dedicated to the heroes of the Risorgimento, already begun in 1985. From that year there are some unpublished sketches and paintings dedicated to the monument of Santorre di Santarosa located in the homonymous square in Savigliano. Over the years, this research has become increasingly broad and complex, also addressing other monuments dedicated to the various heroes of the Risorgimento, of which a singular operation of linguistic decontextualization of sculpture is evident. Through a strongly pictorial use of colour, Fissore emphasizes the psychological and human aspects of the various characters investigated.

Politically committed, in recent times he had sought new expressive ways, passing through the gray, painting the empty images reflected in the turned off-televisions typical of this mass media Society of Entertainment; almost as if to demonstrate that a speculative, if not a conceptual dimension prevailed in him.

Since 2007, with the “Eroica” project, Daniele Fissore has developed and conceived an OPEN AIR public installation – 560sqm in size – for the Nuovo Parco Dora in Turin on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the Unification of Italy. Inaugurated in May 2011, it is a work where the gigantic original paintings of the “Heroes” pictorial cycle are reproduced on an urban scale and reworked by Fissore with ad hoc pictorial gestures and historical quotations of the protagonists of the Italian Risorgimento.

On 17 June 2011, the exhibition “Eroica Known and Unknown Heroes” opens at the Regional Museum of Natural Sciences in Turin. which collects the original paintings of the Parco Dora installation, with that typical attention to ordinary people, to the suburbs, to a social dimension of culture and painting.

Since 2012 Fissore has continued the cycle of turned off-videos and has resumed, updating them, the historical themes of the Pic-Nic,

He died at the age of 70 in March 2017.

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