ANTONIO INFANTINO
In 1991 Antonio Infantino receives the AWARD and the HONORIS CAUSA DEGREE in Science, Literature and Art from the Belgium Real Academy.
Antonio Infantino was born In Sabaudia (LT) in 1944. "You will never know where does he come from, you won't know where he is going. He moves like clouds". That is what is written about him in an effective description that begins the volume "Antonio Infantino: danza cosmica, colore, suono ed architettura" published in 1996, by the European Parliament, that host his big anthological exposition.
The "nomadism" of Infantino, that brings him from Tricarico (not far from Metaponto in Basilicata, residence of the mathematician and philosopher Pitagora) to Florence, Brazil, Belgium, Holland, etc is not only physical but is above all cultural and full of discipline. The "Tarantola dell'arte", this virus that never leaves him and that drives him toward new and original discoveries, makes him becoming an architect (Florence, 1972, Theses on "natural and artificial space, and on the "n" dimensions"), but also a musician, a poet, a painter, a theater producer, an anthropologist, leaving a piece of dream in every field that he has touched.
In 1973/74 he taught garden Art at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Florence. In Brazil, Belgium, Italy he did some urban projects, parks, churches, hospitals, theaters, buildings, houses, apartments, gardens, furnitures and objects, and all those projects has been realized.
Within all "the things made", as he calls them, that made him becoming famous, it is important to remember the constitution of his musical band: "I Tarantolati di Tricatico". When he comes back from Egypt and Creta, Infantino, in 1975, makes a research on the mediterranean arts, remembering the experiences that he lived and creates a new music repertory using the Lacano dialect, with particular linguistic sonorities, combined with minimal chords and with an important percussion base. Within Antonio Infantino successes with his Tarantolati: "La Gatta Mammona", used again, in 1997, with the band "99 posse", and Infantino's composition "AVOLA", that he played in the Dario Fo show "Ci ragiono e canto".
In 1966 Feltrinelli published some of his compositions as a poet:"I denti cariati e la patria" with a preface made by Fernanda Pivano. He doesn't get in "the Italian City of Light" by mistake: Infantino has not only participated at the readings with Allen Ginsberg, but it was also one of the star in the Italian beat, as it is said in an article from il Corriere Della Sera, when "il tarantolato" stayed a night in jail because he was going around Milan with a crown on his head. An individual that really incarnates the best things of the cultures and the spectacles of last 30 years.
Magician, mystic, philosopher and scientist, Infantino put all discipline in one dimension called: Art, that for him means "a bridge between the individual mind and the spiritual mind".
Thousands of persons, in Italy and from everywhere in the world, saw his spectacles, expositions, performances, radio and tv shows. The press realized a lot of articles about his work.
In 2003 Infantino has been invited to realize a Special Event About Visual Art, Music, Theater and dance, TARA'n'TRANCE Techno Cathartic Opera, in the gardens of the Biennale di Venezia.
