Guglielmo Spotorno is an artist, but also an entrepreneur, poet, journalist and philosopher. Two exhibitions far apart in space, one in Abu Dhabi and the other in Parma, bring together works, thoughts and traces of the master who investigates the world through painting.

In the exhibition “Pace e Amore. Italian Selection for Expo 2021” – the official event of Expo 2020 Dubai – which opened on 1 October at the Manarat Al Saadiyat gallery in Abu Dhabi, Spotorno is one of the Ambassador artists representing Italy in the Saadiyat Cultural District.

His painting Dubai, made in 2021, was chosen for the cover of the October Corporate Diary – a real diary created to support the selected artists and a vehicle to promote the event and Italian culture. 

“Dubai is the endless curiosity,” Spotorno tells the publication, in the interview by Gianmarco Puntelli – the event’s commissioner. “It is the city I have heard most about and know least about. It is a city in which proportions rise up from the earth to the sky with such dimensions that detail loses meaning.”

Several topics, addressed in the Corporate Diary, try to outline the figure of the artist and his work. From his passion for drawing to his artistic education in his family, from his way of communicating through art to the cycles he has tackled in his production: those concerning cities, the sea and life. 

“The artist’s work is timeless, or rather, he sometimes anticipates it,” says Spotorno, who manages to maintain “the childlike spirit of immediate communication” in his paintings. 

His works are multifaceted and tell of humanised cities, technology and economy, but also of the sea and its creatures. There is also room for poetry in Spotorno’s work. “Painting and poetry have in common the need for synthesis,” he says. “If it is art, it is always born an hour before us. If it is true, it has no clock or calendar”. 

For him, art is not an instrument of salvation for the future, but an “accessory of the richest men and social distraction or duty”. 

“The more humans proceeds in science the more they prepare for their own self-destruction, I don’t think art can do anything,” he explains. “Art, which is there anyway, is now only complementary to technology.  It’s a luxury “pastime”, but still a memory. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have become the Leonardo, Michelangelo and Picasso of nowadays.”

The 13th edition of ArtParma Fair 2021 – Modern and Contemporary Art Fair – opened in Parma on 2 October, with over 80 exhibitors presented artists such as Giorgio De Chirico, Lucio Fontana, Giorgio Morandi, Agostino Bonalumi, Mario Schifano, Tano Festa and Angelo Brescianini, as well as emerging names. Here, SATURA Palazzo Stella dedicated an entire stand to Spotorno, recounting fifty years of artistic production and highlighting the recurring theme of the sea in his works.