The author

Gianfranco Angelico Benvenuto,
born in Udine (Italy), after working in publishing and advertising, has for 20 years been involved in photographic representation. At the end of the 80’s his posters were pulled off the walls by collectors who wanted to take those images home.
Already back in 1983 he launched his provocation, which grew in size through the years: with his Calendario delle Casalinghe (Housewives Calendar), which has become a must-have, he attracted the interest of collectors and started a social phenomenon in Italy and all over Europe, having chased top models away from the pedestal and enhanced the imperfect beauty and lives of women you would usually meet on the stairs to your apartment, at the bar, in an office or in the metro.
Shocking the world of communication, he reached international fame with his provocative images, already cult objects, even though the media have often emphasized the provocation of domestic nudity, forgetting to give importance to the real creative soul of the author, possessed by the desire to celebrate normality.
With the Controbiennale delle Casalinghe (Counterbiennale of Housewives) he has erased the distance between people and art, with his brilliant mix of the brushstrokes of the greatest painting Masters and the interpretative expressiveness of “common” women.
Not shocking, but strong and poetic in their normality, his images for social campaigns:
- Angeli senza ali (Angels with no Wings), a provocative photographic exhibition for stem cell research, caused an extended debate in the European media;
- Fotoreportage di una vita non vissuta (Photo-reportage of a life not lived). An itinerant exhibition around building sites, for the prevention of accidents at work. The true hypothetical life of Gabriele S., an only child, a worker who died at work at age 23. His empty mason’s overalls travel on in time with no body and no soul, filled by the wind only.
Unlike many of his colleagues, Gianfranco Angelico Benvenuto, as the writer Carlo Sgorlon said, is never compared to other photographers but, balancing between painting, literature and photography, to writers of time, such as Kafka, in search of impossible situations.