Giuseppe Stampone

1974, Cluses, France

Giuseppe Stampone is an Italian visual artist who lives and works between Teramo, Rome and Brussels. Since childhood he chose art as his preferred means of expression, using the Bic pen as his signature tool: a mark so distinctive that Bic itself created a dedicated colour for him, Stampone blue. His artistic practice ranges from drawing to installation, from video to participatory intervention, with a methodical, poetic approach aimed at prompting critical reflection on social, environmental and political issues.

He has exhibited in major international institutions such as MAXXI, the 59th Venice Biennale, the American Academy, the Fondazione Burri, MACRO, the Rome Quadrennial, the MIT Museum (USA), the Museum of Fine Arts (USA), the LAM Museum of Contemporary Art (Cuba), the Sidney Biennial Foundation (Australia), the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (India) and MAMBO in Bogotá (Colombia). His works are held in prestigious public and private collections around the world. He currently teaches Painting Techniques at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Bologna and collaborates with universities and academies across Europe.

In Aprutium… Abruzzo mon amour, Giuseppe Stampone offers a map of Abruzzo that is a passionate hymn to his homeland, but also a gesture of friendship and closeness toward someone who, like Stefano Rastrelli, shares with him a love for art and for deep roots. This work is not only a masterpiece of detail traced with his unmistakable Bic pen, but a choral story where symbols, faces and places intertwine into a living narrative, able to move and surprise at every glance.
Those who know Giuseppe and Stefano know that their friendship goes well beyond a simple artist-collector relationship: they are bound by genuine esteem, built on shared experiences and unique projects. Like the time Stampone, with his poetics and unmistakable mark, created by hand the wedding favours for Stefano's daughter Liliana's wedding - a special gift that reflects the care and affection binding two men united by an intense shared vision of art and life.
Aprutium... Abruzzo mon amour is a work that speaks of roots, pride and identity, but also of true friendship. A tribute that transcends its territory to become a declaration of love for history, for culture, and for those who recognise in art a bridge between people and the places that define us most.
This work is currently on loan for the major Giuseppe Stampone exhibition titled Game Over at the Fondazione Malvina Menegaz, Museo di Castelbasso (TE), celebrating twenty years of the artist's career from 27 July to 31 August, in the evocative spaces of the Palazzi De Sanctis and Clemente.