The “HOMAGE TO SCHIFANO” project came about in a spontaneous, almost natural way, and evolved thanks to the determination of Antonella Villanova and Alessandro Bagnai, who decided to bring it to fruition, juxtaposing Mario Schifano’s wonderful, large canvases with my jewelry pieces, which are obviously relatively tiny. Often, as I’m working, I unexpectedly discover assonances between my works and those of artists who influenced me during my education and training. Sometimes these citations are completely spontaneous – it’s almost as if they resurface from layers of suppressed memories of languages that have become part of our cultural baggage. Other times, certain references are sought and distinct, a sort of tribute, a thank-you for the traces that great artists like Schifano have left in their wake. So, one day, while I was working on a project that had to do with the words and contractions used for communication on the internet, I created a piece of jewelry filled with stars, with a shape that quite clearly recalled the trunks of Mario Schifano’s unforgettable palms. The shapes, the stars, the letters: it could only be an homage to Mario Schifano. That was the beginning of what later became a project organized by Galleria Villanova and Galleria Bagnai, which was a great stimulus and gave me a precious opportunity to review a few stages of Mario Schifano’s complicated life and marvelous art, and to develop on a few recurrent themes in his work. With the aim of conserving the gestural immediacy and expressive inventiveness that characterizes many of his works, and at the same time applying the necessary, meticulous, almost obsessive attention to detail that jewelry making requires, I tried to express in my own language my profound gratitude to this great artist, who left an indelible mark on 20^th-century art.