Biography

Franco Cilia was born in 1940 in Sicily, in Ragusa. His research since the 1960s deals with the shattering of the ego and the relationship of the human being with his immaterial other, looking for what moves behind the visible, exploring the possibilities of symbiosis between informal and figurative on a linguistic level. Thus his sculpture attempts to reveal the anthropomorphic mystery of the stones of the Hyblean land, as a deep and underground expression of the Sicilian soul. Cilia’s art continues to evolve and in the 80s it finds international acclaim, from Madrid to Paris, Lisbon, Copenhagen, Istanbul, São Paulo of Brazil, Mexico City, etc … Her research moves between intimate and social, psychic and cosmic, while the contemporary use of different registers highlights a constant restlessness that prevents the fixation of his art in repetitive modules, in strong and ideological contrast with art as decoration or pure experimentalism: art for Cilia it is an instrument of knowledge. His works are now present in public museums and private collections all over the world. In the meantime, the artist has also dedicated himself to writing, ranging from fiction to theatre.

Philosophy

Franco Cilia’s art develops both in painting and in sculpture. In the first period of his production he deals with themes mainly related to the labyrinths of the psyche. In painting, his research is aimed at resolving the figure into chromatic and dynamic elements; in many of his works the sky becomes the protagonist together with his dynamisms of light, up to the fading of forms and the prevalence of pure color. With sculpture, on the other hand, he tries to discover the essence of reality, of his land, of Sicily. The artist is linked to his land both physically and idealistically, he is linked to the stones that he carves in a natural way and sometimes paints. Looking at a sculpture or rather a “stone” of Cilia is a bit like seeing the face of a Sicilian farmer: warm and open in relationships with others but that brings with it the fatigue of living. Cilia’s may seem a ruthless realism, but in reality it is only truthful, and as such, it does not close the discourse on human hope, but opens it. As the artist himself states, “the world is what it is and hiding it from us is useless”.

Artwork in Castagno

Antropomorfico (Anthropomorphic) on the side wall of Casa Paloscia in La Vigna is part of the group of creative and original enigmatic stones of Cilia. Even this stone, like the two “stones” present in the village between the streets of the Borgo Museo, bears all the signs of the history of the artist’s beloved land: the Sicily of fossils, necropolis, Greek ruins, tragedy masks made, however, of very hard stone, of ancient myths such as that of the Cyclops and Sicilian folk tales. Cilia (even in his surname you can hear Sicily) manages to infuse all this into the pierced stone, the culture and soul of his native land to which he is deeply attached. The stones of his earth, the stones of the dry stone walls of the Ragusa countryside and of fragments rolled downstream from the Iblei mountains, of a soft limestone, carved into indefinite faces. In the natural form scratched as if corroded by atmospheric agents or time, the artist manages to give life to tragic human figures with almost bestial but also ironic features. From the way of treating and working the material, one perceives the desire to find oneself and one’s roots in unique forms. The fascination on the observer is undoubted.

Among the sculptures commissioned and placed by Tommaso Paloscia for the open-air museum of Castagno, there are two “stones” by Franco Cilia in the town. Find out more by reading the info sheet on Sasso antropomorfo and the one on Sasso di Ragusa.

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