ClosedBrajo Fuso was born in Perugia on the 21st of February 1899.
He studied in boarding school and then at the Mariotti High School in Umbria. In 1917, he was sent as a lieutenant to fight by the Carso River during the First World War, where he was awarded the Bronze Medal of Military Valour.
Official historic documents report the motivation for Brajo’s reward. He received a bronze medal of military valour because he engaged in hand-to-hand combat with his enemies to save the lives of his soldiers between 17 and 20 June 1918 in Fosso Spinolosa.
In 1923, Brajo Fuso graduated in Medicine and Surgery from the University of Rome. At the end of 1927, after the specialisation, he opened a dental clinic in the centre of Perugia. At the same time, he taught at the University of Perugia as an assistant professor until 1934. Brajo Fuso registered many medical patents, for example, “il riunito”, the dental chair that can be found in a dental clinic. The first prototype in the world was installed at his clinic.
From the autobiography of Brajo Fuso:
“I achieved numerous patents in medical, odontostomatological and pharmaceutical fields. In 1957, I published my own study on “dental roots implants” that could have been done, I wrote, in three different ways. I could be defined as the father of bone implantology!”
In 1929, he married Elisabetta Rampielli (called Bettina), a Bolognese academic artist who spent the rest of her life with him and was fundamental for his artistic education.
Read the autobiography of Bettina Rampielli Fuso
In 1931, Brajo Fuso wrote his first literary works, such as “Occhiopino, Storia di un ragazzo di gomma” (“Occhiopino, The tale of a rubber boy”). From 1942 to 1945, he wrote “Cinematografo del cervello” (“Cinematograph of the brain”) and “Carnevale dei centri nervosi” (“Carnival of nerve centres”), tales for teenagers that he also illustrated. “Il Chinchibatte” and “L’uovo rosso” (“The red egg”) were two books with blank pages that could be drawn by kids. During the Second World War, in which he took part as a captain doctor, he wrote a diary: “Col bisturi all’inferno" (“With the scalpel in hell”); then the novel “Gostro frate castro”.
In 1935, he became professor of Dentistry and Dental Prosthesis in Rome. Between 1938 and 1943, he taught at the University of Perugia, except during the war period. As a professor, he represented dentists of the Dental Clinic of the Polyclinic of Perugia, of which he also held the position of Director. Since 1944, as a professor, he gave extra classes to the 5th and 6th year students.
In 1940, he was enlisted again and sent as a captain doctor to Albania for the Italian military campaign in Greece during the Second World War. He stayed there for three years. During that period, he was awarded the Military Cross for having assisted soldiers wounded during enemy attacks. In 1941, he was severely injured and forced to remain immobile for several months.
He came back to Perugia for recovery. Supported by Bettina, his wife, he started painting as an autodidact on small wooden panels that he would display in a personal exhibition in Rome at the Gallery “Il Cortile”, presented by Leonardo Sinisgalli, Nicoletta Ciarletta and Libero De Libero.
The year 1946 marked the beginning of his artistic career.
With experimental applications of colour on canvas, he began the process of abstraction culminating in the Straticromie in 1947, followed by the Cromoscolature. In 1949, he exhibited his ceramic artworks for the first time in the Sala della Leva in Perugia.
Look at the artworks of Brajo Fuso
From the autobiography of Brajo Fuso:
“One day I came across a tube containing yellow paint… I grabbed the tube and dropped rivulets and trickles of paint on a wooden panel: I dropped it far and wide, in circles. The day after, I procured other tubes: a red, a black, a green, a light blue. I improved the distribution of colour by dropping it from a pointed stick on the yellow from the day before. I started with the red, then the green and the black. I waited for one hour before dropping the light blue… I made a lot of these panels and small panels that I later largely destroyed and used their pieces to make figurative art. I later called them STRATIKROMIE, those coloured artworks.”
In the 1950s, in Ansedonia, he created his first personal outdoor exhibition space. In 1960, with the support of Bettina, he took up this idea again and started the most important creation of his life: the Fuseum. It is an art park built on the hill just outside Perugia, where the couple lived for some periods, and today it collects most of Brajo’s artworks.
From the autobiography of Brajo Fuso:
“In 1961, on the hill of Montemalbe, five kilometres from Perugia, in the middle of the green of holm-oak trees, I created the Fuseum, my personal gallery, a wooded park scattered with sculptures”
In the 1960s, he continued experimentations in the informal and material fields: he made the Acidocromi, Metalloplatiche and Legni collections. These artworks, characterised by a highly expressive simple style, were made with objects of common use at the end of their destined lives. Brajo Fuso took these objects and relocated them in a different context. Between the 1960s and 1970s, he exhibited in Milan, Venice, Rome, Terni and Spoleto during the Festival dei Due Mondi (Festival of the Two Worlds), an international showcase for arts.
In 1976, Editalia published the first monography of Brajo Fuso in a series dedicated to contemporary art, with critical essays of Giulio Cargo Argan, Italo Tomassoni and André Verdet. In 1980, the Umbria Region and the City of Perugia organised the first anthological exhibition on Brajo Fuso. In the same year, he attended the Fiera del Levante in Bari.
Brajo Fuso died on the 30th of December 1980 in Perugia. He entrusted the Fuseum, his most beloved creation, to the Fondazione Sodalizio di San Martino to preserve it and turn it into a place open to artistic experimentation.
