Renato Abate (born 25 April 1958), best known as Garbo, is an Italian singer-songwriter and record producer. He is considered one of the most important exponents of Italian new wave music.
Born in Milan, Garbo made his debut in 1981 with A Berlino... Va Bene, an album influenced by the David Bowie's Berlin Trilogy. The eponymous title-track was released as a single and it was met with critical success. Garbo's two subsequent albums were well received, but the peak of his career came in 1984 with the song "Radioclima". Presented at the Sanremo Music Festival, it won the Critics Jury Award. Garbo returned to Sanremo the following year, with the song "Cose veloci". In 1993, he founded his own record label, Discipline, with which he released his later works.
In 2006, Garbo was honored by a tribute album, ConGarbo, where some of his most popular songs were covered by protagonists of the Italian independent music scene such as Baustelle, Delta-V, Krisma, Zu and Meg (former members of 99 Posse), Soerba (Luca Urbani and Gabriele D'ÃÂmora), Andy (from Bluvertigo) and Boosta (from Subsonica).
In 2014, he acted in the film-comedy Sexy Shop.