The painter Giuseppe Veneziano, crowned artist of the year by the top magazine in the sector, has created a 30×30 cm art tile entitled: “Lei ha il culo caldo” acrylic painting on terracotta, for the art collection of the Epicentro Museum of Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto.
This important result was achieved not only thanks to the commitment of the painter Giuseppe Veneziano, now a full citizen of Pietrasanta who has made it his second home after his beloved Sicily, but also thanks to a close and important collaboration between Nino Abbate, Founder of the Epicentro Museum, and Andrea Bartoli, Founder of the Farm Cultural Park of Favara, a perfect combination for a greater dissemination of contemporary art in Sicily that we hope will have other important implications of collaboration.
Giuseppe Veneziano, the child prodigy of Italian neo-pop, was elected artist of the year 2023 by Artuu.it., a trade magazine that guides readers to discover the new widespread aesthetic languages and pop roots that shape and fuel the creativity and culture of our time. The jury included important experts from the art world who awarded an artist who, more than any other, today fills exhibitions, fairs, digital squares with girls and young and old people who are uneducated and unaccustomed to the language of the contemporary, with people who are strangers and indifferent to the narrow circuit of “official” art.
Those who appreciate the artist’s sarcastic, immediate, irreverent, amused and corrosive style, capable of bringing together, in a single series of paintings, a Madonna by Raphael, Berlusconi, Michael Jackson, Spider Man, Baby Jesus and Hitler, all supporting actors in a great crazy and outrageous circus which in fact is our widespread imagination today.
Giuseppe Veneziano is happy and also pleased with Vittorio Sgarbi’s comment. “Veneziano’s victory – explains Sgarbi – is evidence of the strength of popular and easy-to-read figurative art against the intellectualisms typical of many contemporary artists, which create separation between the artist and the observer. Understanding Veneziano – adds Sgarbi – is simple, and in many cases instructive. Others are complicated and destructive”.
Veneziano was the protagonist two years ago of a large exhibition spread out in Pietrasanta where his playful and even irreverent sculptures actually became attractions. And in some cases they caused discussion, in many other cases they ended up in tens of thousands of selfies and reels and Instagram or Tik Tok stories”. What characterizes Veneziano’s work is the constant linguistic reversal of commonplaces, the constant questioning of the codes we are used to clinging to.
