Franco Costalonga: Light, Reflection, and Kinetic Art

Franco Costalonga, born in Venice in 1933, spent his childhood surrounded by the world of books and artworks, as he lived with his family in the caretaker’s house of a Venetian palace. Early exposure to this environment nurtured his curiosity and passion for art. After working in various manual jobs, he devoted himself to the restoration of prints, antique books, and paintings, even safeguarding the original writings of Rainer Maria Rilke at Duino Castle. Alongside this, he pursued studies in finance, which later led to a parallel career in teaching.

Early Experiments and Abstraction

The Italian art scene of the 1950s was dominated by Informalism, and Costalonga’s first experiments reflected its influence. His early works, suspended “between surfaces and lines,” as critic Leon Minassian described them, explored lyrical abstraction and unconventional materials. A turning point came when he worked as a fine art printer in the workshop of Galileo Borin, where he gained direct access to techniques and tools that fueled his creativity.

Design and New Materials

In the early 1960s, Costalonga opened a design studio with Mariano Caputo, a furniture designer. One of their armchairs won first prize at the Padua Fair, opening new avenues for artistic and material experimentation. This period marked his transition to modern industrial materials and the development of one of his stylistic trademarks: works composed of mirrored hemispheres, first exhibited in 1967 at the Numero Gallery in Florence.

Synchrom Gallery and the Encounter with Munari

The defining moment of his career came through his association with the Synchrom Gallery in Brescia, founded with inspiration from Russian Constructivism. Its goal was to make art accessible beyond collectors, spreading it to a wider public. Costalonga began creating objects with a functional aesthetic, in line with the philosophy of Bruno Munari, who became a key influence. Munari encouraged him to abandon the idea of a fixed artistic style and embrace continuous experimentation.

Kinetic Art and Chromatic Discovery

From that moment, Costalonga’s work was firmly rooted in kinetic art, a movement that integrated motion and perception into the artwork. His mirrored hemispheres, when arranged in different compositions, produced ever-changing optical effects depending on the viewer’s perspective. A major innovation came with his Chromo-kinetic Objects: placing a colored cylinder at the center of a hemisphere projected its image across the entire surface, creating luminous variations.

Light, Reflection, and Infinite Variations

Through the repetition of simple geometric elements, Costalonga generated infinite visual compositions. His works evolved into the celebrated series Gradients of Luminosity, where tilted cylinders, cut at precise angles and painted, created vibrant spatial rhythms. Equally renowned are his Reflex Works, where reflective plates captured and transformed light into dynamic surfaces.

A Life in Kinetic Art

For over fifty years, Franco Costalonga remained one of the most passionate and consistent interpreters of kinetic art in Italy. His oeuvre demonstrates an inexhaustible pursuit of new visual languages, rooted in light, reflection, and interaction with the viewer. For him, art was a continuous discovery of new worlds, an open dialogue between perception, matter, and imagination.