If you happen to visit the Amalfi Coast this summer, you will have the unique opportunity to enjoy its beautiful landscape from a completely unusual perspective.

Four large-scale sculptures by the French-Italian artist Bruno Catalano are on display along the waterfront until September 30, 2023. The sculptures all have a suitcase or a bag with them and it is clear they are on a journey. But what makes them unique, is that they all have a significant piece missing from the center of their body.

The Travelers series, also known as Les Voyageurs, represent journey as well as emigration - something their artist has experienced firsthand. They represent men, women, and children who move forward, baggage in hand, driven by determinations that the audience is left free to imagine.

Born in Morocco to a Sicilian family and moving to France at the age of twelve, Bruno Catalano is an artist of travelers. No wonder his art spoke to my very soul like love at first sight. Ever since I discovered his work at Galeries Bartoux in New York, I became fascinated with him and his ability to document his cultural identity through his sculptures.

For those who don’t know me, I have always had a hard time just staying in one place and my life has been so defined by movement and change that I immediately felt a strong kinship with Catalano's voyagers who walk with a suitcase in their hand.

The Travelers bronze sculptures are characterized by their distinct fragmented form that symbolizes the themes of travel, migration, and journeying that are intrinsically woven into the human experience. The missing parts are a visual depiction of the disruption and sentiments caused by a life on the move, a perspective that is both personal and universal. At the same time, it is those very missing parts that
allow the characters to blend into their locations and act as a void to see and appreciate the surrounding world. The artist claims that they reflect the relationship between completeness and emptiness that has distinguished the large part of the 20th century.

But in the end, it doesn’t matter where they come from or where they go. The Travellers may be footloose and yet everywhere at home; they may leave a piece of heart and a part of themselves wherever they go; but they will always take new memories with them in their suitcase.

LES VOYAGEURS

Bruno Catalano

Amalfi Waterfront | 30 May - 30 September 

Thanks to the collaboration between the Comune of Amalfi and the Ravagnan Gallery in Venice the sculptures Blue de Chine, Pierre David Tryptique, Hubert, and the unpublished sculpture Simone, will transform the seafront of Amalfi into an open-air museum now through September 30, 2023, blending
seamlessly with its landscape, natural beauty, and its ancient history linked to the trade and travel.
This open-air exhibition is a tribute to the people of Amalfi in the world, and to all women and men who have left the perfect places of childhood for work, or because forced by contingent situations their suitcases not only loaded with a few personal effects, but with memories, hopes and dreams.

Would you like to meet The Travelers?

If you got inspired and would like to plan your trip , don’t leave anything to chance. Contact a travel designer for a custom itinerary planning, expert advice on the best venues and destinations, insider access and more.