Franchina

Nino Franchina graduated from the Accademia di Belle Arti in Palermo, where he took part in his first group exhibition in 1932. Initially close to the archaism deriving from Arturo Martini, Franchina was then in contact with the Milanese artistic circles opposed to the Novecento Italiano.
In 1936 he moved to Milan for a year, and here he joined the Corrente association. In 1939 he married Gina, daughter of the painter Gino Severini, who profoundly influenced his art. His links with an artist of the calibre of Severini brought him into contact with the international artistic milieu and the avant-garde of Paris, which he visited frequently from 1947 to 1950.

So decisive for his artistic formation was his encounter with Constantin Brancusi that Franchina always considered him to be his ideal master. His sculptural style was characterized by the dialectic of linear tensions and more substantial nuclei of material (plaster, wood, stone, sheet metal, iron, copper, brass, steel), evoking a universe of images having organic forms. In 1948 Franchina participated in the Venice Biennale, where he exhibited with the Fronte Nuovo delle Arti, while a room was devoted to his works at the Venice Biennales of 1958, 1966 and 1972.