[1] Over the course of his career, he created more than 25 collections of drawings, founded celebrated Sicilian cultural magazines, Sicilia and Ciclope, and illustrated works by Machiavelli, Kafka, Leonardo Sciascia, Giovanni Arpino and Giuseppe Ungaretti amongst many others.

[13] The early success of Sicilia caught the eye of Irene Brin and Gaspero del Corso, founders of the Galleria dell'Obelisco in Rome, a famous hub for Italy's artistic elite.

Caruso became the director of the gallery's publishing arm and struck up close friendships with poets De Liberto, Giuseppe Ungaretti and Leonardo Sinisgalli, and painters Ben Shahn, Fabrizio Clerici, Colombotto Rosso and Renzo Vespignani.

The collection made Caruso's name internationally, featuring what Sinisgalli labelled "a tiny universe of jugglers, sleep-walkers, acrobats, time-wasters, street urchins and craftsmen darting around cheerfully like fish caught in the net of a tragic, silent and unstable world",[16] He had his first solo show in London at the Arthur Jeffress Gallery in 1955, and saw his work appear in the collections of celebrated patrons of the arts across the United States like Helena Rubenstein, Larry Aldrich, Richard Avedon, Walter Bareiss, Eric Estorick, Joan Whitney Payson, Stanley J. Seeger and John Hay Whitney.

[17] Back in Sicily, Caruso struck up a friendship with Girolamo Li Causi, leader of the Italian Communist Party, and began actively supporting the local peasant revolts.

[21] Over the following years Caruso travelled extensively to Iran, India, Thailand and Japan, studying Persian calligraphy and completing a series of drawings on dictatorships, famine, and the threat of nuclear warfare.

On this trip he completed commissions for Time, Fortune and Life magazines and, inspired by a meeting with Malcolm X, began work on Americana (1968) in which he championed the Civil Rights Movement and stood against the Vietnam War.

Days before his death his son, Roberto Caruso, gave him a pencil and paper and, despite having refused to work for almost two years, he completed one final drawing; a melted, disfigured face (see image).