Italo Antico is born in Cagliari in 1934.
He spent his childhood and youth in Trieste. Back in Sardinia in the Fifties, before dedicating himself to the sculpture he went through a number of laborious torment but creative stages; from his youthfull experience as young mate on the routes of the Americas and the Orient to the carieer of teacher in Cagliari, in Milano and then principal of the "U. Boccioni" Art Lyceum in Milano. He begin his artistic way by an important experience as painter in 1954, acquires a broad range of technical knowledge and finally gets to the sculpture: formerly he embosses and chisels reliefs with thin primitive patterns, then he gets to an abstract structuralist sculpture.
In 1962 he produces a range of jewels of silver with sea and river stones that exibits in the International Exhibition in Frankfurt. From this moment he dedicates himself both to the jewel creation and to sculpture. An evident sinthesys and semplification willing is the hallmark of his pieces. In the Sixties he makes brooches and necklaces with stylized floreal patterns from traditional Sardiniandresses.
In 1969/70 there is a changeover both in his sculpture and jewelry. He inserts slender, graceful steel structures in settings where they seem to climb in the endeavor to surpass a limit, in the urge to traverse space (as in the Church of S. Michele in Fidenza and in Gubbio).
Antico has always interpreted sculpture as a slender metal element soaring into space, almost perforating it. There are informal acts, "signs" of almost rhythmic movement, are frequently multiplied in parallel elements set as slightly different angles. This has become the artist's personal signature, to which he remains faithful although with continuous variations.
Italo Antico lives and works in Miilano, via della commenda, 21 - 20122 Milano.