Alessandro Santoro was born in Faenza (Ravenna) in June 1969. He lived with his family first in Marche and Lombardy, and at the end of the Seventies he moved to Novara, where his parents started a craft activity. After graduating as a surveyor, he enrolled in the faculty of architecture at the Milan Polytechnic, which he attended for about three years. In this period the intolerance for authority, already manifested during childhood, is exacerbated, turning into a mental illness that leads him to a progressive isolation. Abandoning his university studies, which he was successfully conducting, Alessandro undertook a trip around Europe with a university friend. When he returned, at the end of ’91, he underwent therapies, supported by his family, and at the same time he devoted himself intensely to painting and drawing. From that moment, and for about a decade, Alessandro paints and draws compulsively, and despite his personal reluctance, he exposes in small exhibitions between Novara and Milan. On the occasion of one exhibition (2005) he wrote the only text relating to his own painting, in which he tells the genesis of Eviotali, the fantastic creatures that appear in his works. Around 1997 mental disorders became more acute, and after various periods of wandering, a first hospitalization and a first suicide attempt, Alessandro underwent a series of TSOs, followed by periods of extreme instability, in which he alternated family life and life on the street. Disillusioned about the real possibility of a redemption, Alessandro commits suicide, in September 2007. His production includes about a thousand drawings and 400 acrylics, as well as poems and song lyrics.