Giuffrida Nino

Biography

Born in 1924 in Sicily, Nino Giuffrida developed a passion for painting at the age of 17 at the art school in Catania, where he became friends with classmates such as Pippo Aleo and Giovanni Calogero. After an aborted attempt to reach France in 1948, he arrived in Paris on December 8, 1949, settling in Montmartre, at 30 rue Gabrielle, the same street where Picasso had lived decades earlier. In 1961, Nino met Picasso, who encouraged him to bring his personal sensibility to his works. In the 1950s, he devoted himself to painting Paris while sketching portraits in the cafés of Montmartre and Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Inspired by Cubism, he specialized in depicting children, capturing their intensity of expression. With the disappearance of the art galleries in Montmartre, he moved to the Côte d'Azur, to Cannes and then to Vallauris, and became an international painter, exhibiting in cities such as Rome, Brussels, Chicago, and Geneva. In Paris, he directed the Galerie de la Colonne, also exhibiting works by great artists such as Chagall, Dalì, and Picasso. His flourishing career was marked by a series of solo exhibitions that propelled him onto the world art scene.