Macro Sassone Italian Artist: b. 1942. Marco Sassone, was born 1942 in Campi Bisenzio, a Tuscan village. He moved to Florence in 1954, where his interest in painting began. He studied architectural drafting at the Istituto Galileo Galilei, and sold his first works, watercolor sketches, to tourists. Sassone studied with painter Silvio Loffredo, who had been a pupil of the Austrian artist Oskar Kokoschka. These artists formed Sassone's early influences. In November 1967, after the destructive flood that had devastated Florence, Sassone traveled to the United States where he settled in California. He moved to Laguna Beach, where he exhibited at the annual Festival of the Arts. In the early 1980s Sassone moved his studio to San Francisco, where he encountered homelessness. He spent several years sketching the homeless people he met while observing life on the streets. This work formed the exhibition "Home on the Streets" which opened in 1994, at the Museo ItaloAmericano in San Francisco, and traveled to Los Angeles and Florence, Italy. In 1982 Marco Sassone was Knighted by the president of Italy, Sandro Pertini, into the Order to the Merit of the Italian Republic and received a gold medal award from the Italian Academy of Arts, Literature and Science.