Palazzo Italia Bucharest, Raffaele Gerardi donated his work “Conflicts”. The painting, created in oil, charcoal and wax on canvas in 2000, is still tremendously current, even after 22 years.
The gift of this work is a symbol of gratitude for the work done in support of the Ukrainian people by Palazzo Italia and the Group Solidarity and Emergency sponsored by the Italian Chefs association.

The meaning of the gesture comes from the need to be close to the Ukrainian population and try to make a contribution, however small. The painting will be presented for exhibitions and/or offers to be donated to associations that deal with assistance to Ukrainian refugees.

I believe that art has failed or is failing its purpose. If art cannot change the world, or rather, people, I believe it has lost its power and has become self-serving.  I am pissed off at myself, at artists, at art and its systems, since it fails to change the minds of people who decide to have others killed.

Art is losing its very essence, its raison d’être, since it fails to create everyday beauty and offer it to those who give the order to kill. If we decide to express ourselves through a gesture called art, but are unable to impose that inner balance, which can lead us to think before acting against others and to stop before using a weapon, we are utterly helpless, useless and void.

If people continue to die, it means – to a certain extent – that art, its entire meaning or its social, political, inspirational and imaginary purpose are also dying.

We transcend time, pass our feelings on to new generations and have a duty to make the place we live in habitable, peaceful, clean, full of dignity and respect for every single one of us and for all existing diversities.

And so if there is an art, just as there is a creed, let us fight, let us paint, let us create so that we can help each other set an example for those who, more than us, will once again decide to commit a cowardly, murderous act by continuing to turn people against each other.

Today we all have tears in our eyes, and our hearts are wounded and burdened by time.

February 2022

Painting is a refuge.

Painting is a virus.

I keep it and cultivate it in Serrungarina among my things, my books, my projects, my memories.

Painting is like a virus for my actions, a filter of meaning, a “chromobiological” entity whose nature is an organism made of colours.

It attacks my daily thought, filters it, judges it and invites it to escape.

Painting coexists with all my other passions and seeks space, always, in my heart.

Stroke as black that describes, white as a nothingness to seek.

Black is sound, white is pause.

Stroke is beginning, it is the root of surprises.

Unexpected astonishment connected to the revived gesture.

The Thread. It becomes a net, a weave, sometimes regular, sometimes complicated, difficult to rewind, just like life that follows an invisible thread, perhaps the one of destiny.

Stories are created, the threads of memory join up and future trajectories are drawn.

Emotions, Relationships, Things, Places, Men, Choices.

The invisible thread of going and coming back, of losing oneself and finding oneself again.