Salvo was an Italian modernist painter and sculptor known for his conceptual practice; he later transitioned to richly colored metaphysical landscapes and cityscapes that recall the works of Giorgio de Chirico. Early in his career, Salvo was associated with the 1960s Turin Arte Povera movement. He shared a studio with Alighiero Boetti during this period, and the two had a reciprocal influence on one another’s practices. Salvo’s text-based works were inspired by Conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth. Per his instructions, the marble Salvo è vivo (Salvo is alive) (1973), was turned to reveal its verso Salvo è morto (Salvo is dead) upon his death in 2015. He had begun painting by the mid 1970s, blending real and imagined spaces to create simplified, hyper-saturated compositions that imply abstract concepts like time and memory. His work has been presented at Documenta and the Venice Biennale.
Also in the engraving works the landscape is the main subject of his research, not a landscape drawn from the real but the ideas and sensations of places made of colors and simplified shapes in the search for pure essence.