Giovanni Profumo was born in Genoa in 1935.
His classical studies were to influence him deeply.
In the early post-war years, he often visited one of the most important Ligurian painters, Paolo S. Rodocanachi, in his atelier but he soon developed his own style.
In his work of the nineteen fifties, the influence of his Ligurian background is very recognizable in his works but his landscapes are never copied but rather re-invented.
In the sixties he became interested in a form of abstraction where a trace of the figurative can still be still recognized. He expressed his new geometric style in oils painted on canvas with a palette knife. In the meantime Profumo began producing pottery at the “Pozzo Garitta” in Albissola and took part in the “Italia 61” exhibition in Turin with a large ceramic panel.
In the seventies, besides going back to painting landscapes, enriched by his earlier experiences, he expressed his vision of the modern world polemically, but also poetically.
In 1971 RAI, the Italian television company, featured him in “Italian Chronicles”.
Even though he favoured oils, he also produced tempera paintings, pastel drawings and some figurative frescoes.
In this period Profumo, without giving up painting, also planned the colour schemes for buildings under restoration in old areas of the city and he worked on some projects for the Genoa City Council (for example the restoration of Galleria Mazzini) and on the restoration of the tonnara of Isola Piana in Sardinia.
Master of colour as he was, in this field he displayed his profound  knowledge of the Ligurian chromatic tradition, ably adapted in order to respect the surrounding environment. In his last years Profumo proceeded with his research on colour and light, rarefying the contours of what he still called “landscapes”.
His “landscapes” are as much exercises in pure painting as the expression of a necessity to achieve a form of inner representation.
Giovanni Profumo died prematurely in 1997.