Four large-scale sculptures by the French-Italian artist Bruno Catalano are on display along the waterfront until September 30, 2023. The sculptures all carry a suitcase or a bag, and they are clearly on a journey. But what makes them unique is that they all have a significant piece missing from the center of their body.   

Simone Bruno Catalano

The Travelers series, also known as Les Voyageurs, represents journeys and emigration—something their artist has experienced firsthand. They represent men, women, and children who move forward, baggage in hand, driven by determinations that the audience is left free to imagine.

Traveling carries with it the curse of being at home everywhere, and yet nowhere, for wherever one is, some part of oneself remains on another continent.

Margot Fonteyn

Born in Morocco to a Sicilian family and moving to France at the age of twelve, Bruno Catalano is an artist of travelers. No wonder his art spoke to my soul like love at first sight. Ever since I discovered his work at Galeries Bartoux in New York, I became fascinated with him and his ability to document his cultural identity through his sculptures.

Bleu de Chine

For those who don't know me, I have always had a hard time staying in one place. My life has been so defined by movement and change that I immediately felt a strong kinship with Catalano's voyagers, who walk with a suitcase in their hand. 

Catalano's bronze sculptures, with their distinct fragmented form, symbolize the universal themes of travel, migration, and journeying that are deeply woven into the human experience. The missing parts are a powerful visual representation of the disruption and emotions caused by a life on the move, offering a personal and universal perspective. 

At the same time, those missing parts allow the characters to blend into their locations and act as a void to see and appreciate the surrounding world. The artist claims that they reflect the relationship between completeness and emptiness that has distinguished the majority of the 20th century.

But in the end, it doesn't matter where they come from or where they go. The Travellers may be footloose, a term that implies a sense of freedom and lack of attachment, and everywhere at home; they may leave a piece of heart and a part of themselves wherever they go, but they will always take new memories in their suitcase.

LES VOYAGEURS

Bruno Catalano

Amalfi Waterfront | May 30 – September 30 

Thanks to the collaboration between the Comune of Amalfi, the local government, and the Ravagnan Gallery in Venice, a renowned art institution, the sculptures Blue de Chine, Pierre David Tryptique, Hubert, and the unpublished sculpture Simone will transform the seafront of Amalfi into an open-air museum now through September 30, 2023, blending seamlessly with its landscape, natural beauty, and its ancient history linked to the trade and travel.

This open-air exhibition is a tribute to the people of Amalfi in the world and to all women and men who have left the perfect places of childhood for work or because forced by contingent situations. Their suitcases are not only loaded with a few personal effects but also with memories, hopes, and dreams.