Prisma Art Prize | Giuliano Sacchero

Giuliano Sacchero: “Erasures and mistakes are an integral part of the whole creation process. Without them I could not go on and every mistake I always consider a step forward in the work.“

By Marco Crispano

How and why did you start your career in art?

My journey in art begins late at the age of eighteen even though I have always drawn since childhood. It starts as a transition from writing to image. For me it was easier to find in color what I was, what I felt.

How did you discover your medium and why did you choose it?

It all happened quickly. From poetry I began to draw. Pen on paper. I bought my first easel and the first canvas cartons. From there I began to paint without knowing. My journey in painting began with the first experiments on cardboard. At the time, I was working on the billboards that the newsagents displayed.

Can you talk about your creative process? How is your work born? How long you take? When do you know it’s over?

Every artwork almost always begins with the desire for a color. From there the journey begins. Each stroke suggests another and so on. Erasures and mistakes are an integral part of the whole creation process. Without them I could not go on and every mistake I always consider a step forward in the work. Chance also plays a very important role. A drop of turpentine or water, a cotton thread or some ash on the canvas suggest shapes, lines etc. Everything works in my favor and it is up to me to know how to see, grasp and capture whatever is useful. The execution time of a work is not decided. I have no answer to this question. It happened to start and finish a job in a quarter of an hour as it happened to finish it after a month. I can’t decide. The canvas is in control. When is a painting finished? I never know. It would all be easier if I could know. It is something that is felt. It’s something the picture tells you. You have to be good at understanding it. If it were up to me I would continue to add and remove perhaps indefinitely.

Who are your favorite artists? Which ones are you inspired by?

I have many favorite artists but if I had to consider the first great master who opened my eyes it was certainly Giotto. With him I saw beautiful things. Many other great international artists have taught me important things that I am still trying to learn today. From Matisse to Cecily Brown. Francis Bacon and Osvaldo Licini, Picasso, Mirò and arriving at deKooning, Hockney, Twombly, Festa and many many others. I am also inspired by design magazines. Another decisive step was the study of Renaissance painting. I am not inspired by any particular artist because I try to capture everything that interests me in the various periods of my artistic career, to kidnap it, to understand it and make it mine. I try to understand why one work of a great artist works and another doesn’t. I’m interested in building a harmony that works. In this period I am interested in color and sign in the simplest and most visually immediate way possible.

What are the themes you face in your works?

A long time ago I started my work with the social issues of the individual in mind. I was interested in everything that is futile in our life. I was interested in the superfluous in our life and I painted a masked society made of superficiality. Here, I faced the issues on the superficiality that housed in the human being. Then I became interested in the surreal until I ended up not addressing social issues anymore. I began to deepen my inner discourses to get to devote myself intensely to the human figure, to the experimentation and simplification of the sign and to the synthesis of form.

THE ARTIST