Tell us about your debut in art. Because he decided to start his career with the Venice Pro Biennale, an event curated by Salvo Nugnes and Vittorio Sgarbi.

All the greatest artists have passed from the Venice Biennale at the beginning of their career, I preferred to go through the narrow door, for the Pro Biennale in Venice. It is not just a question of opportunity, but it is a philosophy of life. As Jesus says, enter through the narrow door, because the door is wide and the way that leads to perdition spacious, and many are those who enter through it. It will not be a coincidence that you find despicable all those contemporary artists who started their artistic life by passing through the Venice Biennale which is the broad door.

So don't you like contemporary art? I mean, do you feel like a man who doesn't belong to this era?

Referring to the words of a well-known character who said that "it is not me who is ahead of the time, you are all the others late", le pain est bon ... (the bread is good) not because everyone likes it but because likes it to me. [smiles]

A self-centered vision of art. Doesn't this contradict his criticism of other more famous contemporary artists?

Putting yourself at the center of your art is right but this does not mean that it can be shared by everyone. But as I said, the bread is not good ...

Because everyone likes it, yes yes. Yet success is achieved above all with the public, and without the public the artist has no value.

The public is the strength of a single artist, although the strength of the single is greater than that of the public. Look, if an artist is successful it is first of all thanks to him. Because while the whole public could be wrong about the opinion he can have on a single person, that single person instead knows he is not wrong about the opinion he can have of himself. All that person's success lies in asserting that opinion he has about himself. How? Showing the truth. The audience will notice if you are lying to them, and they will not forgive you.

So if the public decrees the success of an artist, does the public itself have the power to decree his end?

For this reason, to ensure that the artist retains the true power to assert his art of him and does not allow others to decide on himself, it is important that he maintain a correct and honest behavior through his art. So that no one has to question his consistency and respect for him.

If art has so much power, it must be in the hands of just men, capable as you say, of telling the truth, being honest, and having respect.

Above all, respect for the public, who, as I said, is the one who judges the artist. The artist must not allow him to be a victim of the judgment of others, therefore constantly maintaining a correct, honest and sincere attitude in the relationship with the public, ensures that the public has nothing to reproach him. For this reason, however, I, as part of the public observing the works of contemporary artists, harshly criticize their way of making art.

What do you criticize him in particular?

The lack of regard. Respect is the father of all virtues. You may have one, two or all of the virtues, but if you do not have the respect you risk becoming proud, arrogant, harmful to history and to those who have done and will be part of it.

In your opinion, what does this apparently drift of art depend on?

Thank God it is not an artistic drift, rather it is a close passage to the coast of human contempt. Man has suffered several disasters in his history, one of these is the one we are experiencing, but as history teaches us, from suffering you reborn. Bad times create strong men, strong men create wise men, wise men create better times.

It is the concept of the Phoenix.

If all modern works were burned, no one would really miss what was created. This is because nothing that has been created in the last century (I am speaking from the postwar period onwards) is truly worthy of being called art. There was an excessive hurry to build regardless of how it was built, because war has always accustomed man to make a virtue of necessity, and we know well that if you have not eaten for twelve days and find yourself a mouse on your plate, that mouse becomes your tasty meal.

So you not only criticize pictorial art, but also other human expressions such as architecture, urban planning ...

We preferred to put aside the taste for art to foster the need to fill the void left by the war. This is why wars are the real misfortune of humanity. Art is in danger, and it always is because man has always been at war. I listen to the words of Pope Francis who says that we are in the third world war but in reality man has never known peace since he exists, so we are not in a third or fourth world war, but we have always been in the same war, the first and only one that has been fought since Cain killed Abel.

Can religion do anything to save art?

Art is the only thing that makes everyone agree. When we find ourselves in front of the beauty of Michelangelo's fresco of the Creation of Adam, under that ceiling with hundreds of nations mixed together, when hundreds of nations are gathered in front of Leonardo's Mona Lisa in the Louvre room, there is peace because there is 'it is amazement in the face of beauty, and religion plays a fundamental role in feeding the water of peace, therefore religion must constantly invest in art because everything passes through faith, and faith produces art. Even an atheist believes in something, he believes in the non-existence of God. But an atheist will be a visitor to the Louvre and the Sistine Chapel just as a religious will be. Art is stronger than war. If we fought by putting paints in the barrels of the guns, we would all win.