Francesco Tabusso

La danza della vita (The Dance of Life) consists of two panels decorated respectively with the Nativity scene and the Adoration of the Wise Men and the Shepherds, in the midst of which an angel playing in neon announces the good news. Richly painted, with spatula interventions and textured brushstrokes, the two panels change their appearance in the dark, when the luminous threads running along the lines of the drawing are lit. The Christmas theme was not new to Francesco Tabusso, who in the 1980s had produced a series of cases that, like a sort of “pop-up”, contained crib figures painted on wooden strips. The choice of a popular iconography and a certain “vocation for storytelling” are recurrent in Tabusso’s work and have led him to happy collaborations with Piero Chiara, Dino Buzzati, Mario Soldati and Mario Rigoni Stern. 

A young frequenter of Felice Casorati’s studio, Francesco Tabusso (Sesto San Giovanni, 1930-2012) founded the magazine Orsa Minore with other painters of his generation in 1953 and from the following year started a rich exhibition activity in Italy and abroad. Since 1975, he has created the apsidal altarpiece The Canticle of the Creatures and four triptychs dedicated to the Fioretti of St. Francis for the Church of St. Francis of Assisi in Milan. In 2007, a large anthological exhibition was held at the Società Promotrice delle Belle Arti in Turin that celebrated Tabusso as a “painter of Turin”. 

Silvia Maria Sara Cammarata