Damiano Taurino comes from Salento, a region in Apulia which people often call the “boot heel” of Italy – an area in which the Greek and Messapian cultures mixed in ancient times, and which has been steeped in historical and mythological tales and traditions from time immemorial. This region, he says, still influences him today, even though he spent a portion of his schooldays and all his professional training in faraway Switzerland. Since returning to Italy in 1981, he has been living and working in Cesena in Emilia-Romagna.

Taurino shapes his models in clay. Here his muse is often Terpsichore, the “muse of the dance”, and he takes up the motif of dancing again and again. Many dancers are found in his work. In the process, he has developed a reliable rhythmic feel for the body tension that flows through his gracefully dancing figures.