Franco Assetto

Franco Assetto (b. 1911 in Turin – d. 1991 in New York City) was an Italian sculptor and painter who lived in the United States for much of his life.

His early work anticipated Pop Art.. On the occasion of his exhibition"The Bread Show" at the Galleria della Bussola in Turin (1952), he presented a number of bread loaves cast in bronze, eight years before Jasper Johns thought of casting beer cans.

He was part of a group of artists, together with Lucio Fontana, Giuseppe Capogrossi, Alberto Burri and a few others, who wanted to redefine the parameters of post-war art and saw the Informel as the essential condition for the artistic quest in which Form are given as the primary possibility to build the artists own existential experience.

When experiments with informalism reached saturation point he devoted himself to Baroque Autre.

He later became interested in the artistic potential of water and designed a number of public fountains. One of his fountains is positioned in front of the museum of Frontino, Italy.

Other public art projects include the Via Crucis in Saint Basil's Catholic Church, Los Angeles, and The Big Candy in MacArthur Park, Los Angeles.

For some 20 years he had been married to the prominent U.S. West Coast music patron Betty Freeman. In 1978 composer Lou Harrison once wrote a tribute for the two called "Serenade for Betty Freeman and Franco Assetto".