Ugo Nespolo (born 29 August 1941 in Mosso, Biella) is an Italian artist, painter, sculptor, film-maker and writer. He lives and works in Turin. Life and works Nespolo graduated at the Accademia Albertina di Belle Arti of Turin with Enrico Paulucci and obtained a degree in Modern Literature at the University of Turin, with a thesis on Semiology. His career as an artist started in the 1960s. His work was influenced by Pop Art, which was becoming popular in Italy in those years, conceptual art, Arte Povera and Fluxus. He had a chance to see and appreciate closely these movements during a trip to the United States in 1967. He would then continue to regularly visit the States, where he would spend long periods of time, especially during the 1980s. Irony and transgression became key element in Nespolo's art and characterised his work for many years to come. Since 2010 he has been member of the Honour Committee of "Immagine & Poesia", an artistic literary movement founded in Turin, with the patronage of Aeronwy Thomas (Dylan Thomas's daughter). In 2016 he signed the pptArt Manifesto, an international art movement that promote many notable initiatives like the Corporate Art Awards. Cinema In the mid-1960s Nespolo started to work with experimental cinema. His first film, Grazie, mamma Kodak, is from 1966. His friends and fellow artists such as Lucio Fontana, Enrico Baj, Michelangelo Pistoletto and others appeared regularly in his films. Nespolo's second film, A.G. (1968), documents the visit in Turin of Allen Ginsberg. In 2001 he directed Film/a/TO, with the main charachter role played by Edoardo Sanguineti. Nespolo's films have been exhibited in institutions like the Beaubourg in Paris, the Philadelphia Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw's Filmoteka Polska and Ferrara's Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna. Nespolo has produced and direcyed about twenty films over forty years. Applied arts In the 1980s, Nespolo made ceramics and blown glass objects, created over fifty posters for exhibitions and other events, did advertising campaigns for Campari and Azzurra and realised title sequences for shows on the Italian national broadcast television RAI. In 2002, Nespolo was appointed artistic coordinator for the Metropolitana di Torino, with the aim of realising the first "underground museum of modern art". Several underground stations are decorated with his glass etchings and images. Theatre In 1986 Nespolo had the possibility of designing the stage sets for Ferruccio Busoni’s opera Turandot at Connecticut Grand