Italy and the United States of America are two sister nations. They have the same breath, the same heart and the same traditions, in the ever-present memory of Cristoforo Colombo and Amerigo Vespucci. Their names remained as stigmata of America, but also Sebastiano Caboto’s and Giovanni da Verrazzano’s ones. And close to us, the legendary Fiorello La Guardia, who redeemed the human story of many of our grandfathers and fathers who went to America, to escape from the dark horizons of poverty to the great horizons of a land consecrated by the pilgrim fathers, who had gone to die. Disembarking from the MayFlower, they decided to live, creating a new world, with the holy bible in their hands and with the strength of the righteous.
Today this story flourishes in the large Italian-American community, which enjoys immense prestige and consideration, represented by the Niaf. National Italian American Foundation.
In this occasion, on April 10, there will be the gala evening in New York and the artist’s book will be presented. This book has been made by the artistic cultural project Febe. Its title Excelsis collects, in a Renaissance and modern guise, works inspired by the Jubilee 2025 and also wisdom texts by Monsignor Francesco Orazio Piazza, Bishop of Viterbo, by the world-famous scientist and physicist Professor Antonino Zichichi and by the art critic and historian Professor Francesco Gallo Mazzeo, giving context to the reflections on the art of sacredness of artists of authentic historical and stylistic value, with a binding made following the rules of the master booksellers of the past, but that still continue to give light and depth to the craftsmanship of the many Italian districts.
On the cover there is a tondo, with Christ in Majesty, in high relief, a work by Alessandro Romano, a true artistic and stylistic preciousness. In the interior unique works and aristocratic seriality shine, made by Alessandro Romano himself and by Antonella Cappuccio, heir and protagonist of the season of the New Italian Manner, by Giovanni Grassi, an artist of great stylistic and chromatic rigor, by Jessica Olivares author of a religious counterpoint of modernity, by Lorenzo Attolini, author of a personal pictoriality of metamorphic and sparkling tonalisms, by Lionel Yamadjako, who places his multiple gestural fantasy, in the guise of a pedagogical spirituality and by Matteo Plini, gifted with a sense of monumentality similar to Caravaggio, with a profound sense of the sacred and the spiritual.
In essence, this volume is a corpus of writings and images, maieutics of the evangelical doctrine, of the relationship between spirituality and Christianity, of the fundamental openness, in both figurative and abstract art; words and images that complement each other, telling the high meaning of the faith, with the search for reason.
Credo quia absurdum and Credo ut intelligam coexist in the human space, like an itinerarium mentis ad deum; a wonderful work of art and a trait of verbal genius, in a synthesis, that is enclosed and opened in its title Excelsis itself.
These same artists will be the protagonists of an Expo Art, in New York, (which continues after of Hong Kong and London, the path of Febe and the original project of Picasso Defi) with works that intend, with energy, to represent a force of genius and professionality, with a presence of other worthy artists who are part of the vast and multiple proposals of Picasso Defi that gives an opportunity to exhibit in New York, to less known artists, but certainly worthy of entering a more convenient segment of exhibitions and collections.
Here are the names: Francesco Mercadante, Francesco Loliva, Roberto Prandi, Vincenzo Corti, Vito Antonio Faraone, Carlo Maffei, Mark Pesa and Disemino. In essence, a splendid spring for Febe and for Picasso Defi, that, with conscience, professionality and correctness, proposes to culture and the market, a scale of values, even economic, in which various needs and points of view can be satisfied. A special mention goes to the entrepreneurship of Raffaele Tortorella and the managerial ability of Alfonso Masullo. Market and culture, religious spirit, are not in contradiction, but are the indications, which have been entrusted to us from the Heights, to do well and beautiful.
Francesco Gallo Mazzeo