Filippo Ioco was born in 1968 in Leuggern, Switzerland to Italian-born Giuseppe Ioco and Francesca Casarubia. In 1971 the Ioco family moved to the U.S. and established their home in Detroit, Michigan. Unable to speak or learn English for several years, Ioco learned from a young age to rely on art as a form of expression. Quickly, this ability transformed, shaped by the many influences Ioco encountered on his path toward the field of body painting.
One such influence on Ioco's work comes from the world of fashion. Through an assignment in 1985 to do an ad called "La Beaute" ('`The Beauty") Ioco tried his hand successfully at drawing women. Excited by the sensuality surrounding these drawings, Ioco craved more. Soon his imaginative instincts were taking over and with the same sensual strokes he used to create beautiful women, Ioco was painting on canvas. It was a free style introduced to him by photographer/sculptor Siouxsan Miller, and the freedom it gave Ioco set the pace for his limitless career. Determined not to fall prey to traditionally representational art, Ioco learned to pour his paints generously like so much water, and fields of color burst through.
With increasing momentum and a mind with many eyes Ioco decided to continue his education. He studied at the School of Visual Arts but soon realized that the tight confines of the advertising world, his main course of study, left little room for creativity. Intent on making a statement, Ioco chose instead to define his own borders. His vision: a return to art which can explore sensuality and nudity without all of the shame imposed by society; to create work filled with so much color that the observer finds himself diving into an ocean yielding treasures of dreams and replacing race, bias, and gender. Once this vision became clear in his mind, The Movement of Color was born.
Determined to grow, Ioco's Movement of Color soon began to take many shapes. Foremost among them was the 1990 runway art show entitled "Looking into Color." Breaking ground, Ioco created a show in which live models are actually painted to resemble the canvases which they proceed as both model and canvas walk down a runway. It is living and nonliving art existing as one, and it doesn't stop there. Ioco, also an established photographer, soon found himself photographing his subjects. Capturing a rare moment and preserving it on film, thus Bodies of Color was born, and a new medium was mastered into nature, animals, fashion and any thing else that Ioco could paint one into or transform into. A spectacular display of arrangement and color, these photographs, have been featured in Galleries to Magazines.
Like the sunlight in which he loves to work, Filippo Ioco is bright with energy and sensitive to that which is dark in our world. The frustration of silence for so many years has been replaced. It has been replaced by a gift that has been nurtured and fed and now nurtured and feeds all who see it. A respected name in art and fashion circles of New York City, his ever-increasing scope of subjects and broad range of abilities have given to Ioco the tools for greatness, and this is Ioco's time. As he continues to sculpt ideas, chiseling them with detail and dousing them with color, Filippo Ioco proves himself an asset to the art world of our time and of that to come.

www.iocoart.com