1. Bruno Caruso spent much of his adult life working in Rome.
20 Facts About Bruno Caruso
1. 2.
Bruno Caruso fought against the influence of Sicilian Mafia in Italian politics, protested against the Vietnam War, campaigned against the use of straitjackets in psychiatric wards, and championed the rights of Sicilian farmers in their battle for land ownership in the aftermath of World War II.
3.
Bruno Caruso's work has ended up in the collections of notable 20th-century patrons of the arts, including Helena Rubenstein, Arthur Jeffress and Irene Brin.
4.
Bruno Caruso was a member of the prestigious Accademia di San Luca.
5.
Bruno Caruso was born in Palermo, on 8 August 1927, to Giuseppe Caruso and Maria Cucco.
6.
Immediately after the end of World War II, Bruno Caruso signed up to study law at the University of Palermo.
7.
Bruno Caruso earned a living by writing dissertations for exchange students, and claimed to have submitted over 100 successful papers during his time at the university.
8.
In 1948 Bruno Caruso took his first trip to Prague where, confronted by the Nazi atrocities of World War II, he completed his first official collection entitled "Deutschland uber alles", after George Grosz.
9.
In 1953 Bruno Caruso received a commission from the Sicilian Government to create Sicilia, a magazine series celebrating Sicilian art and culture.
10.
In 1974 the magazine created a special edition in honour of Bruno Caruso, featuring a bespoke cover and 117 of his drawings.
11.
Bruno Caruso became the director of the gallery's publishing arm and struck up close friendships with poets De Liberto, Giuseppe Ungaretti and Leonardo Sinisgalli, and painters Ben Shahn, Fabrizio Clerici, Colombotto Rosso and Renzo Vespignani.
12.
Bruno Caruso published the first books on The Triumph of Death, Italian sculptor Giacomo Serpotta and German photographer Wilhelm von Gloeden.
13.
Bruno Caruso had his first solo show in London at the Arthur Jeffress Gallery in 1955, and saw his work appear in the collections of celebrated patrons of the arts across the United States like Helena Rubenstein, Larry Aldrich, Richard Avedon, Walter Bareiss, Eric Estorick, Joan Whitney Payson, Stanley J Seeger and John Hay Whitney.
14.
Back in Sicily, Bruno Caruso struck up a friendship with Girolamo Li Causi, leader of the Italian Communist Party, and began actively supporting the local peasant revolts.
15.
Bruno Caruso completed a collection on the Portella della Ginestra massacre, and campaigned actively for the cultural emancipation of Sicily against the rise of the Mafia.
16.
Bruno Caruso's fight against the endemic corruption in Italian politics climaxed in the 1970s when he was fighting three concurrent legal cases against Michele Sindona, Giovanni Gioia and Vito Ciancimino.
17.
Bruno Caruso returned to this theme throughout his career in collections like Manicomio and La Real Casa dei Matti.
18.
Bruno Caruso returned to the United States in the month of the Kennedy assassination, guest of Jack Levine, Tennessee Williams and Ben Shahn.
19.
Bruno Caruso died on 4 November 2018 at the Regina Margherita hospice in Rome.
20.
Days before his death his son, Roberto Bruno Caruso, gave him a pencil and paper and, despite having refused to work for almost two years, he completed one final drawing; a melted, disfigured face.