“They are born in the mind as evocations…those landscapes are not memorised but are landscapes of the soul. Sometimes I have the impression of painting in trance, an ideal condition to put on the canvass an image of places only imagined”.

“The poet descends from the sky or ascends it leaning on the ladder of his sentiments which softly speak to him. A man without dreams is not a man: he is a ghost who cancels from his memory the time in which he lived without leaving any trace”.

“Uomini di pietra”(Men of stone) is the synthesis of a cycle indicating in a pessimistic key, the petrification of human sentiments. The values are not respected any more and an anarchic form of sentiments has entered the heart of man. He is isolated in an apparent economic well-being, but not in that of the soul; he is consequently not at peace with himself. It is certainly a pessimistic idea, but, luckily it is compensated by the poets who, even today, invoke the highest sentiments with their lyrics. I too, write them particularly dealing with the most beautiful of creatures: woman, who represents our future with her maternity and gentleness”.

“From the ashes of this man of stone shall arise in the near future a new man, more conscious and aware. A “homo novus” who, although having lost so many ideals, shall have new mental forms and from each present bud, strong branches shall grow with a new vigorous lymph flowing through them”.

“I consider myself an absolutely figurative painter, even though not in the traditional manner. My portrayal is meditated, fruit of reflection; it is above all the result of forty years of technical research. I am very severe with myself and destroy the paintings which do not satisfy me. I insist particularly on chromatic research until I reach the desired effect”.

“Nature expresses itself, but one must know how to read it. It has a mute but expressive language, solemn for those who know how to interpret its sense but insignificant for those who look and do not see”.

“At any level, man possesses his poetic substratum on which he bases the meaning of life. One must not believe those who say they have never written a line of poetry and do not love it. In my opinion it is impossible, because it is innate in man: it is a part of his spirituality and a gesture, a word, an expression which had escaped from his arid mind, contains in itself clear, unmistakable signs of a poetical thought”.

“Everyone has his enchanted garden in which his spirituality abides”.

“Long live poetry which touches you and makes you meditate. Do not make an effort to write it, it will not be true. Let us leave the pure child, who lives in us, write about it with imagination and candour”.

“The poetry which everyone of us possesses amongst heaps of human and aesthetic ideological debris, tends to regenerate itself through sentiment which is the sole human value. It can be affirmed that poetry keeps man alive, sustains, regenerates and protects him”.

“If the peoples of the world, and particularly the Europeans, shall want to consider the big European body as a unique propelling force of fervid economic activities, they must count on arts and their language. Because poetry is universality and through it we can reach what today is considered an ancient dream to realise”.

“Right from my adolescent years I have felt the authentic and deep meaning of Art. I had no masters, but personally studied the great artists of the past by observing and studying their works, particularly the painting of the nineteenth century, the Macchiaioli. I was also attracted by some prolific Italian and foreign personalities of the nineteenth century however without transport or ecstasy for any”.

“I do not believe in the poetic vein, nor in the so-called inspiration; the expression of an artist is an unmistakable and emblematic manifestation of oneself though in the ups and downs of his sentiments. It is a part of us and we live in reciprocity. Technique and art merge and are realised in a work which is never what we wanted it to be”.

“The dialect is the vital lymph of a people, because the philosophy of daily living and the experience of life have merged in its language”.

“Even surrounded by thousands of computerised stimuli and supersonic speed in every field, dialect resists as it can to the wear of modern times and the greatest merit thereof should be attributed to the Italian province where the value of the language is maintained, even though it is stimulated by the expressive standardisation of the mass-media; it preserves in its casket the good of the primitive and noble word. That good of the word which sometimes, enclosed in an exclamation, defines a mood, a situation, with the exactness which the magic of time has granted it. Even though there are slow and inexorable processes of transformation, the dialect is still vital and remains rooted in the culture and civilisation of a people, like a soul which reveals a personality”.

“The use of a dialect in social contacts should not be considered as a sign of a personal cultural degradation. On the contrary, it is a sign of being solidly anchored to our voices of the past, glorifying the most authentic expressions of the land of our ancestors”.

“It is our aim to promote the epic, the grandeur of dialectal poetry so that it may become ever more loved by a public distracted by a frenetic life”.

“A place of the soul is undoubtedly Paris: majestic and miserable, easy-going and austere, in which, if you have lived there for some years, you have left a part of your breath of life to roam amongst so much history engraved in its stones”.

“Montmartre belongs to the artists and remains a symbol of the general imaginary, from which started the revolution of modern Art. A place of the soul, that even in the gloomy climate of its winters, preserves in its casket of an elected Quarter some of the highest cultural expressions of the world. Montmartre is poetry. A souvenir which remains in your memory and which invites you to return”.

“It is certainly unforgettable to live in Paris, but to live in Montmartre is to live a mood with a different breath. Every man encloses in his heart a city, where thoughts, dreams and intentions are deposited to rise and float with their own vibrations. Such interior city sustains man in his moments of discomfort and thus becomes the port of quiet waters on which the soul rests”.

Translated from Italian by Assia Boutskoy