In 1938 he moved to Palermo, where he enrolled in the liceo artistico; despite an attack of tuberculosis, he graduated in 1941, and in the same year signed up at the Accademia di Belle Arti, where he studied sculpture under Archimede Campini [it].

[2] After the Invasion of Sicily and the Allied occupation of Palermo in 1943, Consagra found work as a caricaturist for the American Red Cross club of the city; he also joined the Italian Communist Party.

[2] In 1947, with Carla Accardi, Ugo Attardi, Piero Dorazio, Mino Guerrini, Achille Perilli, Antonio Sanfilippo [it] and Giulio Turcato, Consagra started the artist's group Forma 1, which advocated both Marxism and structured abstraction.

Working primarily in metal, and later in marble and wood, his thin, roughly carved reliefs, began to be collected by Peggy Guggenheim and other important patrons of the arts.

His work is found in the collections of The Tate Gallery, London, in Museo Cantonale d'Arte of Lugano[7] and the Museum of Modern Art, Paris, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.. Consagra returned to Sicily where he sculpted a number of significant works during the 1980s.