L'ora

Franco Fortunato was born in Rome in 1946. He was artistically formed as a self-taught through the study of Italian painting of the 14th and 15th centuries, the Flemish and some American painters of the early 20th century. His style is characterized by linearity and figurative purity and drawing, synthesis and geometric rigor in a context of fantastic surreality and metaphysics.

After his early youthful experiences, in the 1970s he began exhibiting with the Gruppo Figurale Il Babuino, breaking away from it later in search of his own language and complete autonomy of action. It was at this time that his particular method of working in cycles was born, which became the subject of numerous exhibitions in private galleries and public spaces in Italy, Switzerland, France, Belgium, Spain, Holland, Great Britain, Germany, Argentina, the United States and Canada.

Among the most important are Stories from the Park and Barboni, which he painted between 1980 and 1985, Tales for Europe in 1992, and Pinocchio in 1994. In the second half of the 1990s he made Inventory and Invisible Cities, the latter cycle dedicated to a reading of Italo Calvino, and then Ritrovamenti and Città ritrovate. Underlaid temporally and thematically always remains Il Vagabondo, a poetic figure that runs almost uninterruptedly through Fortunato's entire artistic career. The Wanderer is a character who appears in 1980 and lives his existence by dressing in various guises. In 2000 he returned to literary themes producing the cycle dedicated to The Little Prince, in 2003 Fantastic Architectures, and in 2005 Moby Dick. In 2010 he painted the Drappellone of the Palio di Siena, and in 2012 in Carpineto Romano, he created the monument dedicated to the anniversary of the Unification of Italy. In the same year he created the scenes for Giuseppe Verdi's Il Corsaro, staged at the Teatro Verdi in Trieste in January 2013, on the occasion of Verdi's bicentennial. Also in 2013, he painted the cycle dedicated to The Magic Flute.