Biography

Antonio Henry Vigino was born at Liège (Belgium) in 1932, a fact which from his earliest childhood obliged him to make frequent long trips and stays in Europe (Belgium, France, Germany and Holland) following his family. His grandfather Victor Maréchal was a sculptor and a professor at the St. Luke Academy of Liège and it was in his workshop that Vigino began drawing and modelling. During the fifties, when he had completed his studies in Turin, he stayed for some time in Paris with relatives who lived at Montmartre. The atmosphere of that area in those years was still as highly provocative and almost intact compared to the old times and Vigino, coming back to Italy for various commitments and his military service, could not but absorb the implicit suggestions. During the sixties he partially sacrificed his pictorial activity to the advantage of graphic work, collaborating with magazines and special editions. He also travelled a lot abroad and especially to Vienna (Wiener Schule von Fuchs, Leherb, Proksch) and Barcelona (Romantic Catalan, but also for antynomic leap, the great materic informal of Tapies and Canogar) and came across influences which for contrasting reasons, were to greatly mark his figurative speculations. From 1975 he began paying more attention to exhibition activity and took part in numerous collectives and staged personal shows which were worth the interest of the most sensitive critics. He has been exhibiting his artworks for many year in Portofino, at San Giorgio Art Gallery, and since 1996 his artworks can be found in Venice at Melori & Rosenberg Gallery. Currently he lives in Turin.