Collection: Flavio Belli

His artworks have been shown in over 60 solo and group exhibitions and form part of public and private collections, including two photographs in the National Gallery of Canada.

He has completed numerous public commissions, including a 300 square-foot calligraphy mural for the lobby of St. Joseph Media (2005) and a 72 square-foot mosaic for the School of Art and Design, George Brown College (2020).   

Flavio served on the Board of the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition from 2004 to 2014 and during that time was a member of the Sculpture Selection Committee for the McMurtry Gardens of Justice.

By appointment of the Governor in Council, he sat as a member of the Canadian Cultural Property Export Review Board in Ottawa from 2005 to 2012.

Flavio was Director and Curator of the Carrier Gallery in the Italian community’s Columbus Centre from 1990 to 2005 and during that time he volunteered as an on-camera Arts Reporter on “Toronto Living”, for Rogers Television.

“…these texts are the record of a wholly useless activity undertaken merely for the great delight of its performance.  The sell nothing, they advocate nothing, they condemn nothing, they explicate, preach, and devalue nothing.  In the context of our present lives as writers and artists – the bustling and managing ethos of the magazines and audiences and galleries – the texts of Flavio Belli stand as a record of an exemplary activity, an exemplary participation in language, to the busy world a waste of time, but to an older (and very new) sensibility, the very substance of the encounter with the linguistic environment.”  - John Bentley Mays, Proof Only, 1975

“He produces … rich “automatic” tableaus of graceful symbols that look like Chinese or Hebraic characters but are, in fact, utterly meaningless.  It is daring art that forces the beholder to decide how important it is.  “The thing is,” Belli says, “it takes time.  So it becomes part of a process.  I think we need that.  To meditate, to compose, to be still.” - Ian Brown, The Globe and Mail, 1999