the empty theater Painting

Alessandro Pumo (born in 1954 in Catania, Sicily) is an Italian painter and writer whose visual practice explores the space between presence and absence, identity and recollection. A self-taught artist with a background in literature, Pumo has developed since the 1990s a figurative and intimate painting style, where suspended gestures and partial revelations speak to the fragility of human experience. His works suggest memory as trace, and silence as resistance. In 2025, he presented his solo exhibition La verità dura solo pochi minuti in Catania, accompanied by a published catalogue. He also took part in L’œil qui regarde le monde (Montpellier, 2022) and in numerous national exhibitions. He is the author of the poetry collection Isole (2020), the novel Il destino del corpo (2002, with a postface by Manlio Sgalambro), and the award-winning short story collection Il posto vuoto delle cose scomparse (Nuove Lettere Prize, 2003).