At just seven years old, Franco Bellucci suffered a severe brain injury that deprived him of the ability to speak. Initially institutionalized at the asylum of Volterra, where he spent much of his days tied to his bed, he later joined, from 1999 onward, the Franco Basaglia residential psychiatric center in Livorno, where he attended the Blu Cammello workshop.
Gifted with great physical strength and known for having torn radiators and faucets from the walls of his room, he created objects from gathered materials, all connected together by knotted threads (shoelaces, tubes and flexible pipes, cables, cords): plastic bottles, dolls and toys of all kinds, bicycle wheels.
His works reflect a vital need to reconstruct the world, an irrepressible urge to touch and transform reality, and a complex tactile language. They may suggest a certain brutality in their making; in reality, Bellucci assembled all his elements patiently and calmly.