Aldo Damioli’s painting is made of silence. Silence indicates that everything has already happened or it can suggest the hope that something has yet to happen. On this dual gap, the pictorial cycle “Venice New York” develops making his work universally recognizable: a city simply evoked in the title (Venice) is compared with the glimpses of a depicted city (New York). Ultimately, two cities overlooking water and where art is breathed in the dust of the air.  Absence indicates an aura of mystery and mystery can lead us back to the metaphysical atmospheres of Giorgio de Chirico.

We meet the artist Aldo Damioli in his Milan studio to talk about his world and his ideas.

What is your background and how did you approach the artistic world?
I was fourteen and was painting a view of the Golden Gate. A friend of my father’s passed by, he liked it and offered me five thousand lire. I accepted and said to myself: “Well, it can be done”.

Can you open a small window on the Nineties?
It was a decade of great ferment: public exhibitions, magazines devoting articles to new ferments and then there was the market, working at that time: it was enough for a painting to have a frame and it was sold. Many started queuing towards Eldorado, claiming for themselves the title of gallery owners, merchants or critics; with time this proved to be a real damage.

Does the artistic situation seem greatly changed after thirty years? Has the art galleries system improved or do you think it is in crisis?
In recent years, the number of the ultra-rich has increased enormously, and the system has adapted: few elected people are called to cross the threshold of the financial paradise while for the others all that remains is a pause in limbo.

Do you recognize yourself in any master or author who has been important for your artistic education?
My interest in the art world began when I was thirteen. The first book I bought was about Kandinsky, at the extent that at school, as a joke, they called me Aldinsky. Then with time, with my artistic studies, visits to museums and the reading of numerous books, I refined my taste. I have always kept the spectator’s ego separate from the author’s one, in order not to have prejudices and not to lose the pleasure of looking. As for the masters I must say all of them and none of them.

And with regard to contemporaneity, can you give us some names?
I give you four names: Pietro Roccasalva, Dana Schutz, Neo Rauch and Wladimir Bobok, a Romanian street painter.

Can you describe your artistic world in a few words?
Biologic Art.

Do you have any projects planned for 2021?
Everything stopped, like the horse Duca in the third race of Agnano.

In conclusion, can you tell us about your political orientation?
I am in favour of absolute monarchy, at least if something goes wrong you know whom you have to behead. In addition with the effigies of the monarchs you can make tea sets, with politicians not even that.