Salvatore Fancello

“… From what this young man has left behind in just a few years of work, from his drawings, his ceramics, the sculptures he completed or sketched, you now have enough elements to judge and come close to that admiration that all those who were close to him shared, trying to shield him from the disappointments that his art caused him, since it was so unrhetorical, so opposed to resounding flattery, so alien to that political conformism that is so liked by the officialdom of the authoritative state committees.” 

These words were uttered by Giuseppe Pagano to inaugurate the posthumous exhibition FANCELLO in the Action Center for the Arts of the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan on 10 March 1942, one year after Salvatore Fancello was killed on the Greek-Albanian front. 

Salvatore Fancello was born in Dorgali in 1916, and was trained as a craftsman in a ceramist’s workshop. In 1930 he won a scholarship to the High Institute of Art Industries in Monza where he met architect Giuseppe Pagano. Great designer and technical experimenter on materials, Fancello soon obtained excellent results in artistic ceramics. In 1936 he participated in the VI Milan Triennale of Art and Architecture, where he won the Grand Prix for his work portraying the zodiac. 

In 1940 Giuseppe Pagano commissioned him a series of works for the new Bocconi location in Milan: 18 green-blue litho-ceramic tiles to decorate the pedestal of the flagpole placed in front of the university, and the Giovinezza bas-relief for the canteen, of which a portion remains today.

Called to arms, he died on the Albanian front at the age of 24.