Sebastiano Vassalli, a painter, poet, photographer, essayist, and translator, was born in Genoa on 25 October 1941. His father, Luciano, is Milanese, and his mother, Falaschi Alfreda, is Tuscan. Vassalli considers himself Tuscan, although he has spent most of his life in Piedmont and some of it in Milan. In 1966 Vassalli graduated with a degree in psychology from the University of Milan.

He began writing at the age of twenty but soon felt that he could better express himself through the plastic arts. Pop art was gaining a larger audience, and between 1960 and 1964 Vassalli created pop art, having several important showings to his credit. When, in 1964, works of American pop artists arrived at the Biennale di Venezia, Vassalli understood that pop art, as he conceived it and was expressing it, already existed. Furthermore, he also understood that he could not be a painter all of his life. After 1964 he devoted...