Favourite Works From Mutations 2025 Art Exhibition

This year, the theme of the contemporary art exhibition Mutazioni (Mutations) was "The Signs".

Mutazioni is an annual art event in our town, Schio (VI) in the north-east of Italy. It is usually organised around the end of autumn and the beginning of winter. 

Since this year's theme was a bit abstract, the exhibits were very different. A distinguishing feature of this years' exhibition was a series of exhibits from different countries of Africa from the personal collection of artist and art-collector Bruno Sandonà.

As always, there was a lot to see and admire in the exhibition. In this post, I want to present some of my favourite art-works from the Mutazioni 2025.

The picture on the left is from an installation created by a group of artists from a cooperative working with marginalised persons and disabled persons called Coop Libra that I had liked very much.

A few exhibits seemed familiar to me, they were similar to those presented in earlier editions of Mutazioni exhibitions. So I have excluded them from this list.

Let me start with a hand-painted dress. You can click on the images for a bigger view. 

Hand-Painted Silk by Daria Tasca and Annamaria Iodice

Daria Tasca from Treviso is known for her art combined with woven materials. This time, she was joined by Annamaria Iodice, a sculptor, painter, designer and performer from Naples.

The two artists took a piece of silk woven in early 1950s, hand-painted it and created a two-piece dress out of it, wrapped around a framework of iron, copper and aluminium. It was inspired by the digital prints of an art-work called "The Earthquake" by Slavia Janeslieva and Teona Milieva.

Last year, in the Mutazioni 2024 exhibition, Daria had joined with a ceramic artist Vania Sartori to create a somewhat similar artwork focusing on ceramics, while this year the focus was on painting. I think that works like this are important to remind ourselves that art may not only be in the exhibits but even be worn by persons.

Ceramic Dresses of Lorenzo Gnesotto

There was another artist in the exhibition focusing on wearables. He had used ceramics for creating "dresses", though his interpretation of this idea was completely different. 

Lorenzo is from Bassano del Grappa. His artworks included 3 quirky ceramic "dresses" made from Terracotta bound by elastic fibres. Through the use of different kinds of clays for making the terracotta pieces, it gave them different colours and designs.

More than dresses, they seemed like body-decorations. They also remind me of the metal nets and armours used by medieval soldiers to protect their bodies.

Origami Sculptures and Sound-Installations by Silvia Tedesco

This artwork was by Silvia from Vicenza and it included three round bases on which origami sculptures covered with resins were placed. At the same time, each sculpture was associated with a specific soundscape. In fact, she describes her art as "Talking Artwork".

One of the sculptures, called "the Soul Dance" had dragonfly-shaped origami, another called "Dream and Bubble Soap" had soap bubbles and the third one called "Carpe-Diem" had the Japanese Kohako-Koi fishes. Click on the image for a bigger view.

Monotype Incision Prints by Manuela Simoncelli

Manuela was born in Australia and has her workshop in Mussolente (VI). For the past few years, she has been experimenting with incisions. Apart from her work as an artist, she is also a Jazz singer.

 She had three monotype prints in the exhibition, they were titled Rhythm 1-2-3. One had the silhouette of a woman reading a book, second with a girl and third, a woman with a mobile phone. She first makes the incisions using soft-wax and dry-point and then uses toner transfer for creating unique monotypes.

Abstract Art by Stefania Righi

Stefania is from Vicenza and she had three paintings in the exhibition. Her art tends towards abstract, using mixed material techniques by using materials like stucco and cementite along the oil and acrylic colours to create textured art-works.

I loved her art. For example, the painted shown above, felt like looking at a Zen garden with its soft colours, and hidden forms and shapes that seemed to come out of and disappear in the fog.

Art Works by Bruno Sandonà

Bruno Sandonà from Pastina is both an artist as well as, an art-collector. In the Mutations 2025 exhibition, there were 3 of his artworks. It also had a whole section dedicated to his collection of the art-objects from Africa.

From his art works, I have chosen one of his paintings for this post (left). It had a raw energy and seemed to be inspired by his collection of African art.

I also liked his ceramic-leg sculpture in the exhibition.  

There was a big collection of art objects from different parts of Africa, especially from the countries of West Africa.

About his art-works collection from Africa, in the images below you can see a sculpture that has a kind of ritual container placed on the legs of the two persons. It is from the Dogon people in Mali.

Abstract Paintings by Davide Piazza

Davide Piazza is the president since 2003 of the well-known art-circle La Soffitta located in Vicenza. Apart from being a well-known artist, he is known as a teacher, as he conducts courses of oil painting.

In the exhibition, there were three of his artworks, all three were in shades of blue and yellow. They reminded me of lakes and sand-dunes, with undefined borders, and seemed to transmit serenity and joy.

Hyper-Realism of Giovanni Meneguzzo

Giovanni Meneguzzo, who presented 3 paintings in this exhibition is originally from Malo and now lives in Olmi di Treviso. Malo had 2 other artists from the Meneguzzo family (Giobatta and Corrado) but I am not sure if Giovanni is related to them.

His three paintings in the exhibition, were in hyper-realism style. One had the autumn leaves, another had a discarded cardboard box  used for a gift and the third had left over stuff along with with an old demijohn wine-bottle. I liked all three of them.

Giovanni started as a teacher in an art school. His passion has been to collect left-over stuff such as old leaves, clay, bottles, etc. and create his artworks based on them or by using them in his art.

Absence-Essence Installation by Francesco Risola

The installation had a tree-stump surrounded by dry and cracked earth, on which shadows of a moving tree-leaves were being projected. Thus, the essence or the echo of the tree that had been there in the past was being evoked in the installation by the projection of the shadows of the tree.

The artist seemed to focus his art to share his emotions about thoughtless and meaningless destruction of the nature.

I liked this installation and its idea of projecting the moving shadows of a tree on the tree-stump & cracked dry earth. I felt that it expressed very well the impermanence of life.

Sara Zilio's Flowing Matter

Sara Zilio is an artist from Schio. She had only one artwork in the exhibition, an acrylic painting that seemed like different colours flowing on a liquid surface, sometimes blurring and sometimes separate, tending towards each other like the extended fingers of man touching the divine in Michaelangelo's fresco in the Sistine chapel.

A friend who was visiting the exhibition with me, didn't like it, he said that it reminded him of snakes. So as you can see, choosing favourite artworks is very subjective and his choice of favourites would have been very different from mine. 

Flavio Pelligrini's Abstract Art

Pellegrini's work in the exhibition was one of the most unusual one for me in this exhibition. Pelligrini likes to work with wood, but not by creating usual wood sculptures. Instead, he uses his passion for information technology (IT) to create very unusual abstract art with the wood.

For example, you can click on it and enlarge the above image of Pellegrini's work to look at how he has created it by mixing together wood and IT. I felt that looking at it can be a transcendental experience, guiding our minds towards a meditation on infinity. 

To Conclude: Metamorphosis by Coop Libra

Let me conclude this post with another installation, which I liked very much.

It was a group work made by different persons from a cooperative based in Romano d'Ezzelino that works with marginalised and disabled persons. They had created it under the guidance of art-therapist Valentina Grotto.  

The installation had a mannequin in the centre, who represented the Butterfly-Goddess that is transforming from the Pupa to the Butterfly, and was covered by plastic bags. The central figure was surrounded by a spiral made from individual art-works on paper and clothes. 

Apart from the idea underlying this installation, I felt that visually it created a stunning impact.

If you liked looking at my favourite works from this years Mutazioni exhibition, perhaps you would like to check similar posts about previous editions of Mutazioni - 2021-22 edition and the 2024 edition 

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Art and Dance: Two Passions of Lucio Mantese

As a child, Lucio Mantese had 2 passions - art and dance. Born in a humble family, where his father ran a Meat-shop in Schio, he went started working when he was fifteen. Yet, with his grit and determination, he has been able to create a life for himself, both as a successful artist and a dancer.

I am always trying to write about the creative persons, especially artists living in Schio and Alto-Vicentino, and it was a long time that I wanted to write about Lucio. He has an art gallery in the city and 2-3 years ago, I had told him that I wanted to interview him.

Recently (October 2025), there was an exhibition of five artists in the historical Toaldi Capra palazzo in Schio's city centre. Lucio was one of them. This gave me finally an opportunity to talk to him. This post tells his story in his own words. Click on the pictures for a bigger view.

Sunil: Lucio, you don't live in Schio any more, instead you live in Cogollo del Cengio. What happened, how did this decision of moving out came about?

Lucio: As a boy, I always wanted a home surrounded by greenery. I heard about this land in mountain in Cogollo del Cengio, which was surrounded by the forest and there I found the terrain to realise my dream. At that time, I didn't have enough money to buy it, so I had to take a bank loan, which I paid slowly. It is my dream home.

Sunil: Tell me about your interest for art.

Lucio: Already in the primary school, my teachers used to bring me the pictures of their children, asking me to make their portraits. This helped me to avoid mathematics, which I used to find very difficult. It was a God-given gift. When people ask me where did I learn painting, I tell them ask Pavarotti where did he learn to sing like that. It is a talent, a gift which I had.

Sunil: You didn't study art?

Lucio: I followed the great artists. For example, I learned from important painters who would make still life or landscapes. I could visit their art-studios, see them at work and learn from them. The person who first taught me art was Cesare Valle, though I am mostly self-taught. I did study for a couple of years at the Academia in Venice.

Another thing which helped me to learn art was an art-gallery owner who used to bring me renaissance period art for making their copies. I did this work for about 15 years and that was a big learning period for me, because to have the art-works of renaissance artists, to study them, to see how they had created and to recreate that. I was about 30 years old at that time when I started doing these copies of the famous art works.

Sunil: But the famous artists are so diverse, each with his own way of designing and using colours, how did you learn how to copy such different styles?

Lucio: I can copy only renaissance period art. This style requires that I first make a background like with water-colours, so that the art work does not start on a white canvas, but on another background such as grey. Then I let it dry. I work in layers and after each layer, I have to let it dry. This way of covering with layers of veils is important for renaissance period art.

For example, the blue cloaks that are part of the renaissance paintings by famous artists - I first paint it in black and white, and then with transparent veils of ultramarine or another shade of blue, I would cover it. The parts underneath which are dark remain dark and the parts which were white, they show the colours, but this gives a light to the colours.

Sunil: These specific techniques, how did you learn them?

Lucio: Now there are YouTube channels where you can learn everything, but I had the books of the famous artists in which they explained their way of working.

Sunil: Do you try to recreate such works with old pigments which were used in that period?

Lucio: No, I use the normal colours available in the market. Raffaello used beautiful pigments which continue to be beautiful even 500 years later. The modern colours, they started to be used by artists like Van Gogh, but his famous blues are becoming black. So we don't know what will happen to them.

Sunil: Among the renaissance period artists that you have duplicated, who do you like most?

Lucio: I love the works of Caravaggio. At the time he was painting, he was criticised because his figures looked real, they did not respect the artistic canons of that period. For example, look at the Madonna in this work, she looks like a poor pilgrim woman (points to a copy of a Caravaggio painting he has made). This is similar to our modern sensibility while many other renaissance figures in the paintings they are idealised, they look like the pictures of the saints.

Sunil: Tell me about this self-portrait, with the mountains and the river behind you.

Lucio: This is a recent work, I have painted myself sitting in my garden. It shows our mountains - Colletto di Velo, Summano and Pasubio. The one you call 'river', in reality there is a road passing there, I replaced it with a mountain path. I keep on making self-portraits and when I don't like it any more, I make a new one. I like this one because I think that it shows intensity.

Sunil: Apart from making copies, what other kind of paintings you like to make?

Lucio: I like the local landscapes of Veneto, I like to show them as dream-like landscapes. However, 90% of my work is making portraits commissioned by the people. They bring me the photographs. For example, a man brought me the picture of his wife when she was young and they had gone to some tropical country for their honeymoon. So when I made her portrait, I added more beauty to her and added a tropical background to it. He cried when he saw it, said that I had given him a wonderful memory of his wife.

Sunil: It is beautiful. How much time you need to make something like this?

Lucio: I am quick. Drying needs time, if it is a sunny day or I use a heater, it reduces that time. If we don't count that I can do it in a week.

Sunil: Do you paint everyday?

Lucio: From 9 in the morning, as long as there is sunlight, I am very disciplined. When I am working for too long, then I take a break by going to work in my garden. I look after the garden of our home.

Sunil: Apart from art, you are also passionate about dance, tell me about it.

Lucio: When I was twenty, there was a couple with whom I was very friendly, they loved dancing. Going out with them, I also started dancing, and I joined a dancing school. After the first lesson, I decided that I loved it and I wanted to do it for living. I saw the light, I said that I want to teach dancing. I studied dance in Padua, from one of the greats of dancing, a world champion and to learn from him I used to go to him from midnight till one in the night. Then became a professional and later opened my own dancing school.

I stopped the meat shop of my family that we had, even if my father was very upset about it, because that was the family activity - my father, brothers, grandfather had all worked there. Ten years later, he told me that he was wrong and that I had taken the right decision.

Sunil: Do you still have that dance school?

Lucio: Even though now I am old, but my dance school continues to work that to my son Daniele, who is twenty-six years old. He is national level dancer in Italy for standard dance and Latin dances. I took him to learn dance when he was six. Initially he was not very keen but I told him, when you grow up then you can decide if you want to continue it or not. When he became 18, he said that he wanted to continue it, he was already considered an A-level dancer. Eighteen is too late to start learning dancing, you need to start earlier. Thanks to him and his partner, our dancing school has found a new vitality.

Sunil: Thanks Lucio for giving me your time.  

You can check and contact him through Lucio's Facebook and Instagram pages, there you can also see pictures of his dance school and his son Daniele.

*** 

Minotaur Myth To Talk About Diversity

The Greek myth of Minotaur was about the Minoan civilisation in the Crete island, around 3000 BCE.

In May this year, a theatre group (Campus Company) of Schio's Civic Theatre brought together the students from the different local schools to create a theatre performance on the myth of Minotaur, to talk about the themes of diversity and inclusion. (Click on the images for a bigger view)

This post is about that theatre performance called "Minotauro della Diversità" (Minotaur of Diversity).

Minoans and the Minotaur Myth 

Minoan was a Bronze age civilisation on the Crete island in the Aegean sea.

The myth says that king Mino didn't worship properly to the God Poseidon and the angered God made his queen fall in love with a bull (Taurus). Thus the queen gave birth to a ferocious half-man, half-bull creature called Minotaur, who was closed inside a labyrinth. King Mino asked Athenians to send human sacrifice for Minotaur. An Athenian young man called Theseus offered to be the sacrifice for Minotaur. He killed Minotaur and was able to escape the labyrinth with the help of a string given to him by the king's daughter who loved him.

Minotaur As a Symbol of Diversity

The symbolism of Minotaur for a child with disability seems very obvious. Manny civilisations had superstitions which saw disabled or diverse children as inauspicious and harbingers of bad luck.

In Italy, over the past couple of decades, there has been large scale migration and today the children of the migrants form a significant part of the students in Schio's schools. Thus, using the Minotaur's myth as the theme of a theatre performance was important to raise questions about and to discuss the issues of diversity and inclusion.

Civic Theatre of Schio

 The Civic Theatre of Schio is managed by a Foundation and it has different projects to promote community engagement and participation in its activities. The theatre was built in early 20th century through an initiative of industrialist Alessandro Rossi with active contribution of the citizens. Over the last few years, it has been repaired and restored to its old glory.

Apart from theatre performance, its activities include Campus Lab (to promote theatre among children and young adults) and Dance Well (dance therapy for persons with Parkinson and elderly persons).

Performance of Minotauro Della Diversità

The performance was the result of a workshop for the students and was directed by Ketti Grunchi (Piccionaia company) and Delfina Pevere. Around 30 students from different schools of Schio took part in it.

The stage set-up was simple and minimalist. A square wooden frame with curtains represented the palace or queen's room. Stones placed on the floor represented the labyrinth. All the actors had plain dark-grey pants and T-shirts, and the addition of a crown or a white mask denoted the king and Minotaur. Long pieces of curtain like materials held on the two sides, made the sea-waves. Persons on the stage were accompanied by readers, who sat on the stairs and provided commentary.

The images used with this post will give you some idea about the performance.

Conclusions

While watching the performance, I was thinking that I would have loved to take part in something like this when I was in school. We did do some plays in School, but they were really basic. While this performance with experienced play-writes and director, technical support though lights and sound, and the kind of preparation that must have gone into making it, would have been at a completely different level.

I think that it is wonderful and we are incredibly lucky that even in our tiny town of Schio, we have such a theatre and similar initiatives which contribute in stimulating creation for the students and a better quality of life for all of us residents.

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Looking for Aditya Bhattacharya

Aditya Bhattacharya, son of the film-director Basu Bhattacharya (1934-97) and grandson of film-director Bimal Roy (1909-66) is known in India mainly for his first film as a director, Raakh (1989), which had Pankaj Kapoor, Aamir Khan and Supriya Pathak (image below).

Recently, I was searching for him for my book on Sonali Senroy Dasgupta (1928-2014), known for her love-story with the Italian film-maker Roberto Rossellini in the 1950s.

This post presents an overview about Aditya's life and works. Let me start by explaining why I started searching for him. (All the images are from internet)

Aditya's Sonali Connection

There was a big scandal in the 1950s when Sonali, wife of film-director Harisadhan Dasgupta, had left her husband and gone to live in Europe with Rossellini. Many books have been written about Rossellini.

However, Sonali was a very private person and conceded only few interviews during her life in the 1960s and 70s. Harisadhan lived in India and was not interviewed for the European books. Thus, both Sonali and Harisadhan are almost missing from those books.

Last year, I started to put together a book which could look at this story from the point of view of Sonali and Harisadhan, and their families. For this, I am looking for information about the texture of her days during 1980s-2000s, when the spotlights had moved away from her, leaving her to live in relative anonymity in Rome.

Thus, I thought that Aditya could have provided some information about this period since he had lived in Italy in the early 1990s. Sonali was his mother's cousin and I thought that while in Rome, he must have spent some time with his aunt and her family.

Through my search, I found Aditya and did write to him about Sonali but he did not reply to my message. However, since I had collected information about him, I felt that this would make for an interesting blogpost.

Aditya and His Family

He was born in Bombay in 1965. In a Times of India interview in 2001, he said that "an unstable home environment made him independent early in his life." He was referring to the troubled marriage between his parents, Basu Bhattacharya and Rinki Roy Bhattacharya, which had ended in a divorce. Aditya has two sisters, Chimmu and Anvesha. 

About the film-makers in his family, in an interview in 2007 he said: "I never got a chance to spend time with my grandfather. In fact, my first childhood memory is my grandfather’s death. I was three years old. I have few memories with my father too, as I’ve travelled a lot. I did not expect him to die in 1997. That’s the only regret I have, that I wasn’t there when he needed me and didn’t spend enough time with him. ... My father never shot his films on sets. He would shoot on real locations. Which means, he shot at home. So I would be in the middle of the shoot all the time. Anubhav, Avishkaar, Griha Pravesh and Aastha were shot inside our homes. I have worked with him in only on one film called Panchvati. It was shot in Nepal." (Something does not match here. If he was born in 1965, he would have been one year old in 1966 when Bimal Roy had died; perhaps, he was born earlier, may be in 1963)

In 1997, when his father had died, Aditya was busy with his first Italian film 'Senso Unico'. The film's editing and music were completed in India. He told in the 2021 interview: "Just 2 days earlier I had spoken to him on telephone while he was in the hospital. Finish your work before coming back to see me, he had told me categorically. After his death when I returned, I was unable to think of anything else."

Aditya's Early Works in Bombay

After finishing high school, Aditya decided that he did not wish university education and decided to become a photo-journalist.

In that period, Shyam Benegal asked him to play a role in his film 'Mandi' (1983), and film-magazines hailed him as "the most handsome actor". In the image below, he is on the left in the film's poster, behind Shabana Azmi.

Apart from a few small roles as an actor, he came out with his first film as a director (Raakh) in 1989, when he was only 25. About Aamir Khan, the hero of Raakh, he said: "Aamir and me were classmates in school. In 1983, we had done a short film called Paranoia. We, along with Mansoor Khan, also had a band together. So we were good friends. He did not want to be an actor, he was quite confused about what he wanted to do in life." In the image at the top, he is with Pankaj Kapoor on the sets of this film - Pankaj received a national award for it (the film had received 3 national awards).

During those early years, he was also visiting Prithvi Theatre, where he met Sanjana Kapoor, daughter of well-known Hindi film actor and producer, Shashi Kapoor. Aditya and Sanjana lived together for a few years, before getting married. The marriage lasted a few months and the couple divorced.

About this marriage, in his 2001 interview to ToI, he said: "I was around 18 or 19 when I started hanging around Prithvi (Theatre). Once Sanjana was asked to help with something, we hit it off, and that was the start, he reminisces. The initial spark led to a long term live-in relationship (six years) and later a relatively short-lived marriage. We were very young. We realised we were better a friends and decided to go our separate ways. But we never lost the respect, that caring for each other, at any time."

Aditya's family has many links to other well-known Bollywood film-families. For example, in 2023, his sister Chimmu Acharya's daughter Drisha married well-known actor Dharmendra's grandson and Sunny Deol's son Karan. (Dharmendra has always been close to the Bimal Roy family - his first film Bandini was with Roy and after Roy's death in 1966, he had helped the family by working free in a film called Chaitali). 

Aditya Leaves India and Arrives in Italy

Aditya came to Rome (Italy) in 1990. About his shift to Europe, he said in an interview: "Different people want different things in life. I never dreamt of being famous in Bollywood. I wanted to make films that would make my father and grandfather proud. ... It may sound strange but I wanted to make life difficult for myself ... So I went to Italy the next year and did odd jobs like being a waiter and later, a chef. I also did live editing of television shows in Sicily, a music video for an Italian band, ramp photography… I never called home for help. ... I always feared that I would become a useless guy if I did not struggle and earned things myself. It took me seven years to raise money to make a film. Going through everything there was important for me to become a fuller human being and a better film-maker."

In that same interview, he gave another possible reason for leaving India: "After Raakh, I did a film called Tapori with Mahendra Joshi (a person from Gujarati theatre background who was married to Aamir’s sister Nikhat). He died of a heart attack midway. He was a brilliant theatre person. I didn’t want to do anything for a while, and maybe that’s why I left India." 

About why did he settle in Italy, he said: "I was on my way to London, when I had a stopover in Italy for a week. I really liked the place and the people. So I thought it would be nice to write a story there. After making some money, I made a Italian film called Senso Unico in a place called Messina in Italy. No one had ever shot a film there. I fell in love with that place. To make a film in Italian language, in a place I didn’t know, to raise a lot of money and get a producer from London was a big thing for me. I was 31 years old then."

In another interview for an Italian newspaper in 2021, he had talked about watching Fellini's film '8 1/2' at the Film Institute in India and the huge impact that film had had on him and how he had managed to have a coffee with Fellini many years later while he was shooting his own film, 'Senso Unico'. In this interview he also spoke of leaving India: "In spite of the success of my first film, I was unhappy. I didn't want to follow the dictates of Bollywood and I didn't like the attention of some magazines ..."

Aditya in Messina, Sicily (Italy)

Soon after his Rome experience, in 1991 he shifted to the city of Messina in Sicily. Here, he married Maria Giovanna, a Sicilian, and they have two children. 

In 1995, after shifting to Messina, his name appeared in the programme of the Messina Film Festival as the director of a 1994 short-film "Fannan", about a local music band called Kunsertu. The festival booklet cites the following other works by him -  Indio (1991), Chootey Noì (1992), Contro (1993), Kunsertu Live Acireale (1994) and Mokorto (1994). Probably, these were all short films.

His Italian interview in 2021, also mentions a story about his connection to Messina: "Raakh was shown in a film-festival in Russia. In the festival he met a girl from Messina. Some months later, while in London for discussing some project, he had a stop-over in Rome, and he decided to visit Messina to meet her and some other local persons he had known. He was there for only one week but he knew that he was going to come back to that city. ... He lived there for seven years, working as a video-editor for a local TV station. Since then he goes back to Messina regularly." 

Aditya's Films & Work in Europe 

In 1995, he started working on the screen-play of an Indo-Italian film called Senso Unico (One Way), which was shot and released in 1997. Though this film was presented in some film festivals in 1999 and later became available on Amazon Prime in UK, it was never released in Italy due to some problems among its producers. This film was about Francesco (Lothaire Bluteau), the illustrator of comic books, who also repairs stolen bicycles, and who falls in love with Yasmin (Laila Rouass), an actress shooting a film in the city. The still from a meeting about the film shows Aditya in the left.

In 2005, he directed a Hindi film, Dubai Returned with Irfan Khan and Divya Dutta.

In 2007, he was involved as a producer in an Indo-Italian film, The Chase, with Vidyut Jammwal and Sidharth Malhotra. Some shooting for this film was done in Italy and it was being directed by Anubhav Sinha, but this film was stalled.

In 2009, he was planning to direct a film called Sandokan in Sicily but probably it was also stalled or the project did not take off.  

In 2012, he directed Bombay's Most Wanted (BMW) with Sarita Chaudhury, Jaaved Jafri, Samrat Chakrabarty, Chandan Roy Sanyal and Tannishtha Chatterjee. The film was about a New York journalist, making a film in Mumbai about 3 characters - an encounter specialist policeman, an informer and a bar dancer.

In 2012, he was also planning to make an English film with the actor Rana Daggubati, based in Los Angles titled A Momentary Lapse of Reason but this film did not work out.

It seems that BMW was his last film though recently (2025) he has been seen in UP in India, acting in a serial for his friend Sudhir Mishra, with whom he has already worked a few times. 

Conclusions

In 2025 Aditya is is 60-62 years old, his children are grown up. He continues to be active. For example, this year he is supposed to run a film-making course between October to December 2025 at the Catalunya School of Film-making in Spain, focusing on the South Asian diaspora.

Every time, persons make a decision which completely changes the direction of their lives, such as Aditya's decision to leave India and to start afresh in Italy and Spain, it is natural to wonder if they occasionally look back and ask themselves if they had taken another path in that moment, then how would be their life today.

Perhaps, Aditya also has such moments of "what if". However, in the 2007 interview, he had said, "I have no regrets. I have made films which have been appreciated. I have two beautiful kids. I have two homes in two parts of the world. And I have respect from my contemporaries."  

***

An Artist and His Grand-Daughter

Recently, we had an unusual art exhibition in Schio (click on the pictures for a bigger view).

It presented the works of a hidden artist, someone who had a passion for art, even while he worked in a wool factory and as a house-painter, white-washing the homes. And it was organised by his grand-daughter Alice who had promised her grandfather Romano Benazzi that one day she will organise an art exhibition for him.

The exhibition was called, Nonno Raccontami Un Quadro (Grandpa, tell me a picture).

Romano Benazzi's Life-Story

Romano was born in a village near Ferrara (Italy) in 1941. During the second World War, his father died while fighting in Ukraine. Raised by a single mother, he started working in the fields at a young age. When he was sixteeen, under a Government programme, he came to spend some days with a family in Pieve Belvicino, a few kilometres north of Schio in north-east part of Italy.

A couple of years later, he came back to Pieve in the same programme, but this time a guest of another set of families. Both these experiences created in him strong links of family and friendship, and he fell in love with the beauty of this mountainous area.

He found work with a local firm engaged in painting houses. It was also the period when he started sketching with pencil and charcoal. He fell in love with a local girl, and thus found his wife Gina, who worked in a bar in Pieve. He also took on a second work, at the Lanerossi wool mills of Pieve, while they came to live in Magre area of Schio. They had two children, Guido and Daniela.

Over the years he continued with his passion for art, experimenting with different art mediums including oil paints. After his retirement, he devoted himself completely to his art, in spite of developing Parkinson disease (a disease which causes tremors in hands and difficulties in movements).

Romano lives in a house of elderly persons and even if Parkinson disease limits his manual capabilities, in fact sometimes he doesn't like the results of his efforts, but he still continues to be an artist. The image below has one of his recent sketches with charcoal, where frustrated by his lack of control over his hand movements and unhappy with the result, he covered it with charcoal.

Conclusions

In these pictures you can see some of his works. I was deeply touched by the idea of his grand-daughter Alice, daughter of his son Guido, to honour her grand-father's works and to organise this exhibition in collaboration with the Municipality of Schio.

Though Romano Benazzi remains an unknown painter, his works remain confined to the homes of his family and friends, it is important that they were celebrated by his family and community.

 

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Sareo 2025 Street Art Festival

Schio's annual street art festival "Sareo" was held in the last week of June 2025. During this festival, the artists living in and around Schio are invited to put up their recent works for display in Via Pasubio in the city centre.

The old name of Via Pasubio was Via Sareo, which explains the name of this festival, which goes back to almost fifty years - it was suspended during the Covid years. The image below shows a view of the street with the art works. (You can click on any of the images below for a bigger view)

I want to share some of the art-works from this year's festival, that I liked. Our response to creative works including art, poetry, books, is very subjective. Thus, I am sure that some of the works that I liked, may not seem special to you and you would have chosen completely different works.

I am very fond of water-colour landscapes but this year, I didn't find any such landscape which I found outstanding. However, I also like abstract compositions and there were a few this year, which I liked.

These artists-artworks are not in any particular order.

Winner of Sareo 2024 - Giannino Scorzato: A jury of artists chooses the best artist, winner of Sareo festivals. Last year's winner was Giannino Scorzato from Valdagno. This year,  a solo exhibition of his works was held at the Toaldi-Capra palazzo as a part of Sareo festival.

A self-taught artist, Scorzato is also a mountaineer. He had started with oil paintings, but now he expresses himself mainly in beautiful and amazingly detailed pencil sketches. You can see one of his works from this exhibition in the image below, a portrait of a young girl.

I thought that this landscape by Teresa Vallese captured very well the special light, the landscape and the sea of Mykonos island, with its white houses, with its predominent blue and white colours in a simple way.

I liked the next painting because of its palette of pale colours, the diaphanous-delicate look and the way the flowers and abstract designs foreground the female figure. It is by Antonia Bortoloso from Schio, who is known for her feminine portraits and figures. There were two of her works in this edition of Sareo and I liked both of them. 

The next work has Australian aboriginal masks in pointillism style by Raffaella Rigadello - it reminded me of Andy Warhol's pop-art posters because of their colours and graphics. A handwritten note fixed near the artwork, probably written by the artist, pointed about the subjugation of Aboriginal people in Australia by the European settlers.

Mari Baldisserotto's water-colour of a beautiful girl with blue eyes made me think of the photograph of the Afghan girl by Steve McCurry which was used as cover-pic for National Geographic in 1985. I liked its colour composition and the girl's expression.

I like the way Giuseppe (Beppe) Fochesato uses shafts of light in his interiors. He had a few works in the festival and the one I have chosen has an old portico, probably from an old church with a door at the end. I love its colours and atmosphere.

The next is a water-colour by Egidio Carotta and it has a flower-pot fixed to the wall next to a gate. The painting gets its charm from the contrast in the colours of the bricks of the house, where red bricks are used to create a visual impact and give a shape to the painting.

I also liked the delicate flowers in the water-colour painting by Emanuela Minà from Schio. It had beautiful colours and composition. She also had another water-colour painting in the exhibition, but I liked this one more. 

The painting of a black galleon ship against an abstract background dominated by green colour, made me think of the film Pirates of the Caribbean and captain Jack Sparrow. I liked its dream like abstract effect. It is by Fabiola Carmelini.

Let me conclude by 3 works which I liked most in this year's Sareo. The first is an abstract composition by Luigi Bernardi. I would have preferred its lower part to be less definite and with paler colours, but still I found it intriguing.

The second is titled "Boy with a neckless" and is by Lorenzo Zanello. I liked its colours and the guy's expression. Every time I looked at it, it made me smile. It also reminds me of a guy I knew.

My favourite piece of art this year was this abstract work by Claudio dal Prà from Chiuppano. I am not able to explain why I liked it but I loved its complex colours, hidden figures and its composition. I like art which pulls me in and I can spend a long time trying to understand why I like it.

Conclusions

I think that it is very difficult for an artist to create a completely distinctive style, so that as soon as you see it you can say that it is by that artist. This also means that when you see works that use that style, you can say that this artist is inspired by that one.

However, developing a distinct style can also become a prison - then people expect you to keep on repeating that style forever. In that sense, creating a style of abstract art is much better because it can give you more freedom as an artist.

Regarding the artists whose works I have presented in this post, I was surprised that only a few of them have a social media presence. I feel that many of them, especially those who have not sacrificed years of life in the pursuit of art and have done other works while keeping art as a passion for the weekends or retirement, feel shy of calling themselves as artists and talking about their art.

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