Tiziano Calcari

b. 1969, Brescia

Tiziano Calcari was born in Brescia on the 29th of September 1969 to Battista Calcari and Annunciata Bertelli.

He spent his childhood and adolescence in Irma (BS), a village in the upper Val Trompia with less than one hundred and fifty inhabitants - almost a small mountain hamlet - at 804 metres above sea level.

Even as a child, he showed his aptitude and passion for drawing and the figurative arts, which, however, initially remained unexpressed due to a difficult family situation.

In fact, he had a conflictual relationship with his father, due in art to the peasant and working-class mentality dominant in the Brescia valley, oriented towards a practical 'doing' (a far cry from artistic creativity), and, in part to his authoritarian and despotic character, intolerant of anything that he did not have the ability and/or desire to share. Battista, as much in his relationship with his only son as with his wife, did not accept any relational switch that could in the slightest alter the 'father-master', 'husband-master' bond. The 'beauty' of art, in such a social and family context, became a sort of unforeseen variable, almost to be rejected, as it reshuffled the cards of the lives homologated to a cursus codified by past generations, destined to be inexorably repeated in future generations.

In 1980, the town's parish priest, with the intention of extrapolating him from that hostile environment to the expression of his talents and creative personality, directed him to study at the Diocesan seminary in Brescia, where he obtained a good multi-purpose training and, above all, the possibility of living outside his home, in a situation of serenity free from family tensions.

In 1981, he produced his first oil painting on canvas, an untitled view of the lake, immediately demonstrating his artistic talent, which also later focused on the landscapes of Brescia and other places he visited, gradually softened by the imaginary triggers of ill-defined human figures with sometimes improbable morphology.

At the age of 18, he gave up his studies to start working, gain economic independence and establish his own household. In 1991 he married Marzia Amici, with whom he had three sons, Paolo (1993), Mario (1996) and Michele (1998).

In 1994, he was finally able to buy his first home in Gardone Val Trompia (BS), fifteen kilometres south of Irma (BS), a village with good civic services and interesting job opportunities in the engineering sector.

In 1990, he met the Paraguayan painter Gil Alegre, whom he frequented assiduously and from whom he learnt oil, watercolour, and other painting techniques. He dedicated himself to the study of art history and began to exhibit his works in group exhibitions, participating in various art competitions, which often awarded him prizes and recognitions.

After almost ten years of pictorial experimentation, in the early 2000s he began a new artistic journey, the 'Dolci Presenze' (‘Sweet Presences”) cycle of works, which in 2007 attracted the interest of the Crisolart Galleries in Barcelona (Spain), which became the promoter, in following years, of prestigious exhibitions in the USA, China, Switzerland and various European cities.

The 'Sweet Presences' are the human figures, which with fantastic morphological traits appear in most of Calcari's works of art up to the present day. As much as the artist relates them to a more or less temporally defined cycle of artistic production, which enjoyed great exhibition success, in reality they connote his most mature creative expression, characterized by the imaginative metabolization of the denial of adolescent dreams and the loss of his father; a loss manifested ab initio in his life, through an emotional process a contraries whereby the cumbersome and abusive presence is transformed into emotional death.

In 2011, he was invited by art historian Giulia Sillato to join the art exhibition 'Metaphormism' and in 2012 he exhibited his works at the “M P Birla Millenium Gallery' in London.

In recent years, he has taken part in various exhibition and cultural initiatives, in Italy and abroad, often connected to international events (Spoleto International Art Fair, EXPO 2015, Montichiari Biennale of Contemporary Art, Biennale Lake Como Contemporary Art Exhibition), at galleries and institutional locations.

His poetics, intrinsically 'sustainable' in the artistic sense of the term, achieved further aesthetic maturation in the years of the great pandemic (Covid) through the exploration of creative dialogues with music and writing. One example of this is the solo exhibition entitled 'Quanta strada nei miei sandali' (“How far in my sandals”), inaugurated in 2022 and repeated several times in various institutional locations in the Brescia area, through which texts and music by Paolo Conte become the creative source of a new artistic production, in which Calcari's imaginative world found a gentle shipwreck in the existential contexts evoked by the singer-songwriter, often denied in his difficult adolescence and youth.

In the following years, the critical category of Sustainable Art, conceived and promoted by the Milan-based art critic Marco Eugenio Di Giandomenico, became the principal interpretative framework for

Tiziano Calcari’s artistic research, in which the artist fully recognized the meaning and evolution of his creative practice.

In 2023, as part of the ‘Sustainable Art’ event, organized by Ethicando Association and curated by Marco Eugenio Di Giandomenico, works by Calcari were exhibited in the Sala Vetri of the Museo del Risorgimento in Milan. On that occasion, the monograph The Artistic Experience of Tiziano Calcari: Creativity and Mourning in Sustainable Art (Marco Eugenio Di Giandomenico, Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2023), dedicated to the artist’s career and work, was officially presented.

In 2024, the monograph was presented once again at the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan, accompanied by an exhibition of selected works by the artist and attended by art critics, artists, and distinguished professionals from the contemporary art world.

Later that same year, two of works by Calcari were selected for exhibition at the Chamber of Deputies in Rome as part of SUSTART 2024, curated by Marco Eugenio Di Giandomenico. The event brought together prominent representatives from public institutions, universities and academia, culture, and the arts.

In 2025, as part of SUART 2025, a solo exhibition by Tiziano Calcari was held at the Fabbrica del Vapore in Milan, curated by Marco Eugenio Di Giandomenico and promoted as part of MILAN ARTWEEK 2025.