Description
BIOGRAPHY
Originally from Morocco, Bruno is the third and last child of a Sicilian family. In 1970 the Catalano family left Morocco for France. In 1982 he started working at the Société Nationale Maritime Corse Méditerranée. He stayed there 4 years. He cites his experience as a sailor as central to his inspiration. He is also an electrician.
Catalano was acquainted with sculpting in 1981 in Marseille where he enrolled in Françoise Hamel’s modeling classes. After two years of education, he opened his own art practise in 1985 and secured an oven in which he would bake his first clay figure. Later Catalano began to make big bronze sculptures. His first works were compact and conventional but the later series become increasingly expressive. In 2004 a flaw in one of his characters – a depiction of Cyrano – prompted him to dig and hollow out the chest. A new path of work ensues. An exhibition took place in Marseille in September 2013, to celebrate its status as the European Capital of Culture with ten life-size sculptures exhibited at the port of Marseille.
In 2005, a Parisian gallery contacts him and orders a dozen hollow sculptures. Aware of his luck, Bruno delivers them without delay. Despite the interest they arouse, more than a month goes by without notice of a single sale. The first one purchased is a “traveler” modeled after Toulouse-Lautrec. From then on, they continue to sell, as many as one every two weeks. Orders follow one another, compelling him to produce at a professional pace. His career reaches a new level when, 2 years later, Alexandre Bartoux offers him to exhibit in Galeries Bartoux. Soon, his work is displayed in their gallery on the Champs-Elysées. Thus, Bruno benefits from the support of some of the most dynamic professionals in the art world, as well as from an international network of galleries. Now, most of the orders come from England, Russia and the USA.
Motivated by this growing demand, Bruno works harder. His new “travelers” clearly show more balance and finesse. Their sizes too have grown, sometimes attaining life-size. And he’s closer to mastering their body language.
As exhilarating as his success is, he remains conscious of its frailty; which is probably why he decides to postpone other sculptural approaches. Let’s wager that, in due time, those will surprise and captivate his collectors too. Meanwhile, this workaholic learns to enjoy life again and is sometimes moved by other sculptors’ art. Julien Allègre, René Julien and Denis Chetboune are some of his contemporaries whose works he particularly appreciates. He even owns a sculpture by Salvador Dalí; a variation of the famous “melting clock”. Will time and its symbols ever cease to affect him?
Such is Catalano: proud, anxious, passionate, and generous. By accepting to fight his inner demons and daring to look into the abyss within himself – a stro soul’s privilege – he has found ways to sublimate his deepest wounds into a work whose meaning and beauty border on the universal. Many are the people who will recognize themselves in the bronze’s reflections. But isn’t that the (successful) alchemy of art .
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