Safety & Efficacy of Traditional Medicine

Twenty years ago, in 2006, I was involved in the organisation of a regional meeting on traditional medicine in south Asia, which was held in Bangalore in India.

Recently, I have read some discussions about research on the safety and efficacy of traditional medicine. They reminded me of a speech given my friend Dr Bala on this theme in that meeting. Therefore, I have decided to share some extracts from his speech in this post.

Background to the Regional Meeting Held in Bangalore in 2006 

I was asked to organise and coordinate a meeting on traditional medicine practices in South Asia by a group of international NGOs. Similar regional meetings were held in that period in other parts of the worlds. Final reports from those meetings were put together and provided to the department of Traditional Medicine in the World Health Organisation (WHO) in Geneva.

However, my participation in the whole process was limited to the meeting held in India, since I was busy in other research work in that period. My friends from People's Health Movement in India had played a fundamental role in organising that meeting. 

Dr K. Balasubramaniam (1926-2011) from Health Action International Asia-Pacific (HAI-AP) had given the keynote address at that conference. Dr Bala, as everyone called him, had done pioneering work in access to essential medicines and was a key and respected figure in the international People's Health Movement (PHM) in those days. That meeting was also an opportunity to meet some of my old friends including Dr H. Sudershan from Vivekananda Girijana Kalyana Kendra, Dr Mira Shiva & Dr Ravi Narayan from PHM-India.

That conference was my first real encounter with traditional medicine. It was also the first time that I had visited an Ayurvedic medical college and understood the kind of training Ayurvedic doctors receive in India.

In this post, I would like to share some extracts of the keynote address of Dr Bala focusing on "Evaluation of Safety and Efficacy of Traditional Medicine". His keynote was much wider in scope. For example, he devoted a significant part of his speech to the subject of "Preserving and safeguarding biodiversity sustainability and traditional knowledges". 

In the coming days, I want to share some more papers from that conference. If you wish to read more documents from that meeting, I invite you to check the final report of that conference, which can be freely downloaded.

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Evaluation of Safety and Efficacy of Traditional Medicine 

Dr K Balasubramaniam, Sri Lanka

I believe that this conference will focus on herbal remedies which constitute the therapeutic armamentarium of traditional systems of medicine in the region.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has defined herbal medicines as "Finished labelled medicinal products that contain ingredients from aerial or underground parts of plants parts or other plant material or combination thereof, whether in the crude state or as plant preparations. The same WHO document adds "Medicines containing plant material combined with chemically defined active substances, including chemically defined substances and isolated constituents of plants are not considered to be herbal medicines".

It will therefore, follow that chemically defined isolated constituents of plants used in modern medicine are not herbal medicines, it has been estimated that these medicines derived from plants constitute about 25 percent in modern pharmacopoeia.

The World Health Organization posed a question 2002 whether a herbal medicine can be used clinically if no harm has been found after the use of that herbal medicine for generations and there is no documentation of such an effect. For an answer to the question, reference is made to an earlier WHO document published in 20003 which states "Absence of reported or documented side effect is not an absolute assurance of safety of herbal medicine. However, a full range of toxicology tests may not be necessary. Tests which examine effects that are difficult or even impossible to detect clinically should be encouraged. Suggested tests include immuno-toxicity, geno-toxicity, carcinogenicity and reproductive toxicity", It adds the following caveat, "only when there is no documentations of long historical use of a herbal medicine or when doubts exist about its safety; should additional tests be performed.

A rigid framework that has been prepared for modern synthetic drugs will never be possible for herbal medicines. There has to be some flexibility in toxicological requirements for herbal medicines.

Accordingly, a group of experts met in Chandigarh, India, to develop a suitable framework for carrying out toxicological studies on herbal medicines. The framework developed was broadly accepted by the Indian Council of Medical Research and the WHO. The actual tests to be carried out in the Chandigarh model are given in tables 1 & 2 (click on the tables for a bigger view).

The tests recommended by the WHO are given in Table 3 below (click on the tables for a bigger view).

WHO has called on clinical researchers to conduct clinical evaluation of traditional medicines within the specific framework of rigorous clinical pharmacological principles without ignoring or trampling on the concepts of the traditional systems of medicine.

I wish to take this opportunity to present an alternate view for evaluation of traditional medicine.

Traditional systems of medicine are a summation of several thousands of years of human experience in the selection of plants for preventive and curative healthcare. Practitioners of traditional systems of medicine argue that the efficacy of herbal remedies is due to the synergistic activity among the several ingredients of herbal mixtures. Complex mixtures of plants or herbs form the basis of traditional medicines. The mixtures are usually subject to crushing, heating, boiling, etc. It is possible that this process may change the chemical structure of the active ingredients in the plants.

Clinical pharmacologists and other scientists working on medicinal plants, on the other hand, focus all their attention on isolating and identifying biologically active ingredients in medicinal plants and herbs. When a promising new biologically active chemical ingredient is isolated, it goes through all subsequent investigations identical to those for a new synthetic chemical ingredient.

Traditional healers do not accept that the efficacy is necessarily due to the active ingredients in the plant.

According to the active ingredient approach the modern clinical pharmacologists, take the knowledge from the plant but throws away the wisdom of centuries.

If there is acceptable historical evidence that traditional herbal remedies have been effective in the treatment of certain diseases, but neither their active ingredients nor the mechanisms are known, is it ethically or morally acceptable to not use that treatment? Examples of successful treatment by traditional medicines will be useful to answer these questions,

In the fate 1980s children attending the Dermatology Department, Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street, London showed marked improvements in their eczema symptoms. These improvements were due to oral treatment with aqueous decoctions of a mixture of 10 Chinese medicinal herbs. Clinical experimentation and pharmacological testing revealed that a mixture of the 10 herbs were necessary and that the efficacy could not be attributed to any single active ingredient from any one of the 10 Chinese herbs, A placebo controlled double-blind clinical trial using the 10 Chinese herbs was carried out on 47 selected children with non-exudative eczema. The conclusions of the trial were to validate the standard of current conventional clinical trials utilized in the UK that the traditional Chinese therapy was efficacious.

If these children had to wait till the clinical pharmacologists had screened the 10 Chinese plants for active ingredients and tested them for biological activity, they would never have been given the chance of getting effective treatment with a mixture of 10 Chinese herbs.

Potential cytotoxic drugs are tested for their activity against experimental or human cancer cells. Efficacy depends on the ability to kill specific cancer cell types without affecting normal body cells. Studies on the effects of certain Ayurvedic herbal preparations for possible cytotoxic activity revealed that these herbal preparations did not kill the cancer cells but transformed them into normal healthy cells. These drugs, therefore, have a different mechanism of action, Classical testing methods would have missed this important anti-cancer activity.

I wish to pose a philosophical question. Is medical science one universal and uniquely expressed (western) paradigm – a biomedical paradigm? If it is possible to conceive of alternative methodologies, theories and practices in other domains such as music, logic, linguistics, art and politics, is it not possible to consider possibilities of alternative methodologies in medical science, knowing that doctors practice medicine within a biopsychosocial paradigm?

The guiding principles by which knowledge is built up in the biomedical paradigm are those of the scientific method where hypotheses are clearly stated, then tested and accepted or rejected as truth "until further notice" or "within the stated confidence limits” using only experimental or quasi-experimental designs – a deductive approach to problem solving.

Is it possible for research scientists to examine other methodologies, for example, using experiential methods – an inductive approach, to evaluate traditional herbal remedies?

There is an enormous amount of research on medicinal plants in research institutes in developing countries and the transnational drug industry.

Based on the WHO definition of herbal remedies and the herbal remedies used by practitioners of the traditional system, I wish to pose the following questions:

The Indian Council of Medical Research has taken the plant Pterocarpus marsupium from its use in folklore and Ayurvedic medicine to Phase III clinical evaluation for the treatment of diabetes mellitus using well accepted pharmacological principles. It was handed over to the industry for pharmaceutical development and marketing. This product will be marketed to practitioners of modern medicine. Table 4 (click on the tables for a bigger view) lists examples of modern drugs derived from plants that have been used in the traditional systems of medicine by ancient people around the world.

The question I wish to pose is as follows: "Will this type of research and development to isolate therapeutically active chemical ingredients achieve the objectives of this conference which is to promote the continuous development of traditional medicinal in the region to maximize its contribution in preserving and improving public health."

Let me make it clear that R & D to isolate therapeutically active ingredients from medicinal plants is of critical importance. There is no doubt about it.

But what I wish for you'll to discuss is the need for research to evaluate the safety and efficacy of the herbal remedies used by practitioners of the traditional systems of medicine. For example table 5 gives a 5 list of Ayurvedic remedies for some common ailments (click on the tables for a bigger view).

Is there a need to develop appropriate methods for clinical evaluation of traditional herbal medicines: methods and criteria not to be limited to the methods and concepts of modern biomedical science.

Interestingly much of the scientific literature for traditional medicine uses methodologies comparable to those used to support many modern surgical procedures: individual case reports and patient series with no control or even comparison group.

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For a full version of the keynote address by Dr Bala at the South Asia Regional Conference on Traditional Medicine, held in Bangalore, India in 2006, including the list of references, I invite you to download and read the conference report, that I had prepared. Please write to me at sunil.deepak@gmail.com if you would like any of the presentations made at the meeting.

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A Century of Pasubio War Memorial

The bones-cemetery (Ossario) of the war at the Pasubio mountain near Schio (VI) completes a century this year. Among the different events organised for this anniversary is an exhibition organised at Toaldi-Capra villa in Schio's city centre in June 2026.

The Ossario is about 22 kms from our home and yet it is visible from our terrace, a tiny finger raised up towards the sky at the point where two mountains meet on the horizon. Often, in the morning, when we wake up, we take a look at it to check the day's weather - if it is well visible, or if there is fog denoting humidity or if there are clouds. Thus, it is a kind of personal landmark for us, almost like a family monument.

Let me start this post with a brief background to the battles fought here about a hundred years ago.

First World War in the Pasubio Mountains

Italy joined the first world war in May 1915. Before that, over the past few centuries, this part of Italy known as Alto Vicentino and characterised by Dolomite mountains, had been controlled alternately between the Romans, Vatican (and Austrian-Hungarian empire supporting the Pope) and the Republic of Venice.

When the first world war broke out, the areas north-east to Schio were under Austrian-Hungarian empire, the site where the bones-cemetery was built was also the boundary between Italy and Austria. The Austrian-Hungarian empire lost that war, and the border between Italy and Austria was pushed up to about 175 kms to the north-east.

There were two main sites of battles in this area - Pasubio mountain and the high-plains of Asiago. About a 100,000 soldiers fought at Pasubio and around 10% of them died.

A significant aspect of this war was the building of tunnels inside the mountains, where army officers' offices, ammunition-dumps and hospitals were created. Old mule-tracks were revitalised and new paths were built in the mountains by the soldiers. One famous mountain path, going up along Pasubio had 52 tunnels, all built by soldiers with their own hands and the help of mules.

Construction of the Bones-Cemetery War Memorial

Apart from the war injuries, people also died due to land-slides and extreme cold, especially in winter 1917. Many battles took place in high mountains and narrow mountain passes, difficult to reach. Some bodies were identified and given a burial, but many were not and bodies of the soldiers from the two sides were left in the mountains or buried where ever they were found.

The first idea of creating a war memorial to remember those dead came up in 1917, while the war was going on, when some soldiers asked the bishop of Vicenza for a Madonna statue to be placed inside one of the tunnels. While the Madonna statue was provided, the bishop Ferdinando Rodolfi also started a fund-collection campaign to build a proper monument for the dead. A committee was created for this purpose, at the end of the war, on 3 November 1918.

Architect Ferruccio Chemello, who had designed the civic theatre of Schio was given this responsibility of designing the monument and a hill known as Bella Vista at an altitude of 1265 metres, at the base of Pasubio mountain was chosen for it (the image above shows some of his designs from the exhibition held in Schio in June 2026). The construction started on 1 July 1920 and it was completed around the end of 1925 and the beginning of 1926.

War Memorial and Bones-Cemetery

The memorial has a 35 metres high quadrangular tower in Romana-Bizantine style, with a massive underground basement used as a cemetery for the bones of about five thousand Italian and Austrian soldiers, some of them have names, others are anonymous.

There is chapel at the base, as one enters the tower, with a Madonna statue by sculptor Giuseppe Zanetti. A staircase goes up to four storeys while all around the walls have frescoes and painted glass-windows with a mix of war and religion related images by the artist Tito Chini (images below).

The whole war memorial area is considered as a sacred area and includes a war museum managed by 3 November Foundation near the parking area (image below).

Near-by Places to Visit

A walking road next to the Pasubio War Memorial takes you to a hanging bridge, also known as Tibetan Bridge, which is decorated with Buddhist flags, with beautiful views of the valley below.

Going further along the walking path after the Tibetan bridge one can reach Campo Grosso, known for its spectacular views of the Dolomite mountains.

Walking in the opposite direction towards the Pian delle Fugazze (Fugazze mountain pass) takes you to a popular resting point with the Pasubio bar-restaurant and places like Campo Silvano, Vall'Arsa and Rovereto. I especially love the charming village of Campo Silvano for its spectacular views, an antelope sanctuary and views of a water-reservoir in Vall'Arsa below.

In the End

We try to take all our guests to see the War Memorial because it is a good way to understand local history and for its beautiful views.

One evening at the Pasubio memorial, many years ago, is etched in my memory because of the wonderful colours of the setting sun on the snow-covered mountains with a full moon behind the memorial, as you can see from the image below.

 If this subject interests you, you also might like to read some of my other posts about other war memorials - War Cemeteries of Vicentino; and Remembering Soldiers - War Memorials from Around the World. 

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Life's Purpose and Seth's Mantra

Some decades ago, I was very interested in exploring ideas about death, afterlife, souls, etc. At that time, I had read a large number of books on this theme. Among those books, there were some by an American writer called Jane Roberts, which had a lasting impact on me.

Recently, by chance I found some of those old Jane Roberts books that I had bought during a stay in the USA in the early 1990s. They reminded me about that period of my life when I was utterly taken up by their ideas.

I also discovered that Jane had died in 1984 and they have an online Seth Centre, where you can learn about those books and they have a podcast on YouTube.

This post is about the Jane Roberts' books and about some of its enduring learnings for my life.

Finding the Old Books   

My wife said that the attic is full of useless stuff, and that I should go up and take a good look at it and decide if there is anything worth keeping, otherwise one day she will throw away everything. I know my wife, she does not make empty threats. She did throw away things from my cupboard, after telling me a couple of times to clean it.

So yesterday, I went to the attic. Our attic is underneath sloping roofs, so it is difficult to reach the stuff along the walls (roof is so low at the sides that I need to almost crawl to reach there). It was along one of the walls that I found a plastic bag full of old books, that some ten years ago, I had told myself that I will sort them and decide which ones to keep.

In that bag, I found some Jane Roberts' books, that brought back so many memories. One of the memory was of a cryptic motto, "Why did I Ask for This?", that I had as screensaver on my old computer and which was my mantra for dealing with any challenge.

Jane Roberts' Books About Seth

Jane Roberts and her husband Robert F. Butts had written 8 books in the 1980s - Seth Speaks, The Nature of Personal Reality, Adventures in Consciousness, The Nature of the Psyche, The Seth Material, and 3 volumes of The Unknown reality.

Jane was a medium-writer, writing in a state of trance. She used to channel an "essence or a personality" called Seth, who was defined as "an intelligence no longer focused in physical reality, who has communicated with our world through writer Jane Roberts. During Roberts' trance-like states, Seth has revealed to her startling secrets about life, death, the universe beyond the five senses, and an amazing potential within us that is just waiting to be tapped."

My Ideas About Soul, Life and Afterlife

Like everyone, I had also wondered occasionally about the purpose of our lives - why do we have an conscience and how are we supposed to live our lives. I had lost my father when I was 21 and though I was not new to the idea of death, his sudden death had raised many questions in my mind about souls, what happens to it at death, and what, if anything, is afterlife.

When I was 16, I had once taken part in a seance at a neighbour's house. There were six of us. We had put our fingers on an upside-down empty glass on a chart on which boxes were drawn, with an alphabet in those boxes. We had held hands and invoked a spirit, asking it to come and help us find answers to our questions. I was very surprised when after each question, the glass had moved on the chart, pointing to a "yes" or a "no". I think that it was some kind of self-hypnotism that had made our fingers subtly move that glass, and it was not a real spirit inside it!

I had also tried looking at some of the religious books and their ideas about death. The biblical ideas of heaven and hell, followed by resurrection and restoration of the dead did not convince me. Similar Islamic ideas about angels of death judging my beliefs, etc. seemed equally unconvincing to me. I like some of the Hindu ideas in the Upanishads about our souls being a fragment of God and that after death, that soul reunites with the whole essence of god, but have many doubts about some other beliefs such as those of individual souls that keep their individual essence and may even take rebirth. 

Seth's Views About Purpose of Life

The Jane Roberts' books, touch on a wide variety of subjects such as - ways of looking at past lives, out of body experiences, astral projections, how probable realities combine to create our waking lives, how to explore our own unknown reality, and so on.

Reading these books, provoked a lot of reflections in me about souls and afterlives. Almost thirty years later, I can still recall my fascination with some of those ideas. However, I continue to be sceptical about survival of individual souls and their afterlife. I would rather think of a Seth as an expression of the life energy as a whole.

Seth's Mantra for Me 

Yet, there is one idea from these books that had a huge impact on me and in some ways continues to influence me even today. In one of the books, Seth talked about the purpose of life as the soul taking a life-form so that it could experience certain aspects of material life. It said that before taking birth, the soul decides what kinds of challenges it would like to face in that life. Thus, people being born with challenges or facing specific challenging events in their lives, are souls that need to experience those challenges in order to learn facing and overcoming them.

For me this idea means that everything that happens to me, good or bad, happens because I chose that as a challenge for my life. So every time, I face a challenge, I ask myself: Why did I choose this? What am I going to learn from it? What can I do to overcome it?

In Conclusion 

I tried to share this idea with my friends but it did not always work. For example, when a close friend broke his leg in an accident, and I went to see him at the hospital, I suggested that it might have been a challenge he had chosen for himself. He became very upset saying that it didn't make sense to him that he had chosen all that pain and suffering. 

However, I think that it is good way to face life. Giving up on a challenge and accepting defeat means that we did not give our soul a chance to learn from that experience.

For about 3 decades, I worked in international development programmes with marginalised communities in different countries of Asia, Africa and S. America. One of the approaches which I liked using in my work was called "emancipatory research", where the focus was on helping persons to look at their challenges as barriers and to facilitate them to collectively think of ways to emancipate themselves. I feel that in a way, the "emancipatory research" approach reflected the same basic idea of Seth.

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Vladimiro & Chiara: Art & Love

One the events of the on-going poetry festival (15-31 May 2026) in Schio called Semenze Matte (“Mad seedlings”) is an exhibition titled “Come Un Foglio di Carta” (Like a Sheet of Paper). The on-going exhibition at Palazzo Toaldi Capra in Schio’s city-centre has drawings and prints of the artist Maria Chiara Toni.

At this exhibition I met Vladimiro Elvieri (1950), an artist engraver and companion of Maria Chaira Toni (1950-2025). Vladimiro told me that Chiara, the love of his life for about 47 years, had passed away last year. I spoke to him about their personal and artistic journeys. As we talked, it was clear that speaking about losing Chiara still moved him and made him emotional.

While we talked about their life-stories, it seemed that they had led an active and interesting life, and talking about that would require some more time. Thus, I am planning to meet Vladimiro again, to talk about their artistic experiences about engraving. This first post presents an edited version of our talk on 17 May 2026.

The few art-works presented with this post are by Maria Chaira Toni (click on the images for a bigger view) 

A Conversation with Vladimiro Eliveri 

Sunil: Vladimiro, can we start with your name? This is not a common name in Italy, it sounds more an Eastern European or Russian name.

Vladimiro: It was the name of my uncle, my mother’s brother, he had died in the war and my mother wanted to remember him, that is how I got it. The men in my family, my grandfather and uncle, tended towards the political ideas of Russia of that period, if that had any influence, I don’t know.

Sunil: Tell me about your early life.

Vladimiro: I was born in Schio. My initial education was also in Schio and then I went to the Art Institute of Nove (Bassano). I was married and living in Schio, when in 1978 I met Chiara. It was like being struck by lightening. She was originally from Mantova but was living in Cremona, after 7 months I left Schio and went to live with her. She was working in house furniture sector, and at the same time, she was an artist, designing and painting. I shifted to her studio and that became our home.

Cremona became our base, we were together for forty six and a half year and travelled to different parts of the world as artists. As artists we worked together, discussing every day, we both grew as artists through this interaction, without overpowering the other person. We respected each other as an artist. We had very strong emotional connection with each other and that helped our relationship.

Sunil: Talk to me about your own artistic journey, how did it start?

Vladimiro: My artistic journey started in the nursery school. That was when my first art exhibition was held. I was 4 or 5, I asked myself why I had so many papers full of art, but other children didn’t have them. A nun who came to our school, she said that my designs were beautiful and full of colours. Actually, I was born with the bug of art, and it was the same for Chiara. Art helped us to express our inner liberty through the art.

After 5 years at the Art Institute in Nove, I also went to Paris for some time. Initially, I did a lot of different works to make a living, while making art was in the free time. Most of those works were related to arts and graphics, including making small sculptures, working with silver, and doing stone-cutting.

In 1975, I became an engraver and started making art-incisions when I was working at Torchio-Thiene (a printing press famous for printing of contemporary art) of Armando Martini, who was using different techniques of calcography (Copperplate printing). We became friends. He was printer and also an experimenter of different techniques with new materials. I was putting into practice his inventions as an artist-engraver. I worked with him for 4 years and that had a determining impact on me. With him, I learned how to use the torque for printing. The things I learned with Armando, were useful for me to work as engraver in making incisions in Cremona.

Armando believed in teaching others and I learned this from him. Both, I and Chiara, we also took an active role in teaching young persons about incision-art.

I have about 830 incisions, in different sizes and shapes, some huge ones, some composed of many sheets, some using new techniques, etc. Chiara had made around 320 incisions. Along with incisions, the second artist area of our work is design. Chiara also painted.

Sunil: When you made incisions, were these accompanied by prints?

Vladimiro: Yes of course, for that you need a good printer who understands art. If artists themselves know how to print, it gives them the freedom to decide the kind of results they want from the printing. If an artist who makes incisions, also makes his own prints, it help him in becoming a better incisor. There are many techniques even in printing from incisions, for example, it can be in black and white or it can be in colours. In the recent exhibition of Chiara in Cremona, we had a few colour prints of her work.

Chiara mostly did incisions and paintings, while I also did light-painting, light-design and graphite on Cibachrome (drawing with graphite pencil on photographic-print). I did this because I wanted to interpret the writings of a Polish writer and playwright named Witold Gombrowicz (1904–1969), with whom I felt a deep connection in terms of his essence and thinking. In 1996, I decided to make a series of artworks, a few incisions, mostly light-design, and a few graphite on Cibachrome, around 28 artworks all together, to reinterpret his writings and his themes. I didn’t want to illustrate his words but rather to re-interpret them through my art.

French-American visual artist Man Ray (1890-1976), who was active in Dada and Surrealist movements, had already experimented with light-designs, using a torch-light in the dark, calling them Photograms and Rayographs. In 1949, Pablo Picasso had also collaborated with photographer Gjon Mili to make “light drawings” by making ephemeral figures in the air and fixing them on the film.

For my artworks on the writings of Witold Gombrowicz, I did another variation of this technique. I made light-designs, printed them on Cibachrome and then worked with graphite-tips, so as to bring out the white underneath the black surface. This double work was extraordinary – first there was the light-design, which had movement in the air without a specific or precise idea, it started as a sapling that grew out of me through my gestures in the air. The second part of working on the Cibachrome was more guided, trying to identify the forms hidden inside the light-design, by scratching on the dark surface and bringing out the white lines.

For example, this work called "Cosmo" was based on the title of one of his novels (shows a picture in a catalogue). Once I completed this series, I told about it Francesco Cataluccio (Italian expert of Polish literature for the publisher Feltrinelli, who had curated the publishing of works of Witold Gombrowicz in Italy) and he suggested that I write to the organisers of a festival about Gombrowicz in Poland.

Thus, an exhibition of these works was held at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Radom. It was wonderful because it allowed me and Chiara to participate in that festival, which had theatre groups from different parts of the world to stage his plays. We met many of the persons about whim he had written in his books, it was like a dream for us. For example, there was Alejandro Russovich, the Argentinian philosopher with whom Gombrowicz had lived for 4 years, along with Gombrowicz's wife Rita and many others.

Sunil: Did you travel to other countries with your art?

Vladimiro: With our incisions, we travelled to many art biennale around the world. That was an opportunity to see what others were doing in their countries. Since there were not so many persons in Italy working on incisions, we could exchange experiences at international level.

That helped us to start an Art Biennale in Cremona focusing on incision-art, which was held for 20 years, from 1999 till 2019. Each biennale had 3-4 sections such as guest country, invited international artists, young Italian incision-artists, ex-libris (bookplates) and historical section. Through these, Cremona museum received in gift about 2000 artworks, which is an extraordinary art collection of the best art-incisors from different parts of the world. Some influential persons from the art-world ignored us, others supported us and it was a successful initiative.

An important journey for us when we went to atelier of Henry Goetz (1909-1989) in Paris in 1979. He was a surrealism painter and engraver, a friend of Mirò. While I was working with Martini in Thiene, we had used an engraving technique invented by Goetz but we had modified it, by changing the materials which resulted in more interesting results. I took the prints of those experiments to Goetz in Paris. I was a little apprehensive that he may not like that we have modified his technique, instead he was happy about it. He became a friend.

Another important relationship was with the art-philosopher Dino Formaggio (1914-2008). We met in 1995 and at that time he was already old, but we became good friends and we had very interesting discussions that helped us to grow culturally.

Sunil: So for all this time you were in Cremona, when did you come back to Schio?

Vladimiro: Chiara had retired from her furniture work in 2019. In 2021, we shifted to Schio. In Cremona, her mother was no longer alive while I still had part of my family here. In Cremona we were renting our house and our studio, while I had my mother’s apartment in Schio which was free. We also thought that leaving Cremona, would mean freeing us from her furniture-business related things and to dedicate ourselves only to art. She was very keen that we shift to Schio, even if Cremona was so much closer to Milan, which is the gateway to the international art-world.

We redid my mother’s apartment and we took a studio in Schio, and restarted everything here. But then her illness came back. She had first first been diagnosed in 2000, then it came back in 2018 and was worse. Fortunately, they were able to treat it with chemio and radiotherapy and she became well. That phase lasted till 2023, when it came back again. She died in April 2025.

Chiara was already an artist when we had met. She wanted to do some sculpture also, and was planning to go to a sculpture course in Venice by Francesco Messina (1900-95), but that course was cancelled because there were not enough students for it. She also wanted to learn engraving with Sergio Tarquinio (1925-2026), a famous illustrator and incision-artist in Cremona, but then I arrived in her life and she did incisions with me. However, we also became close friends with Tarquinio.

Her life was busy, she was working, looking after her mother who was ill and yet she participated in my work as well. For example, when I was teaching engraving and had 20-25 students, she used to come to our class after finishing her work and then help me with teaching, and we would continue till mid-night. She was a very special woman.

During the one and a half months of the Biennale, I was conducting workshops in collaboration with the Civic Museum of Cremona, for persons who wanted to learn the art of engraving. Some of the international artists also took part in those courses. We had students from different age groups, from school children to students of art-academies.

Sunil: Thanks Vladimiro for this wonderful talk. This exhibition has only Chiara’s artworks. We need to fix another appointment to talk more about your artwork, as well as about the interesting international connections you had with artists from other countries.

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Riikka Lenkkeri: Depicting Lived Life & Experiences

In May 2026, the well-known artist from Finland Riikka Lenkkeri was in Schio for an art-residency. Thanks to Valeria Bertesina I had an opportunity to spend an evening with her. Here is an edited version of my talk with her - we spoke in Italian and I have translated it into English.

You can check Riikka's artworks at her webpage and Instagram page. (Image left: Riikka working on her painting in Schio - click on the pics for a bigger view)

Introducing Riikka Lenkkeri

During 1990s, Riikka had studied art at the Academia di Belle Arti in Genova, Italy and thus speaks Italian. She now lives and works in Mänttä, about 220 km north of the national capital Helsinki, Finland. Over the last 30 years, she has participated in numerous exhibitions, won many awards and is counted among the prominent artists of Finland.

In the 19th century important paper-mills were setup in Mänttä - The Serlachius paper mill. Those paper mills are still active. Today, Mänttä is called the art city of Finland, it hosts an annual art festival, and has 2 museums – art Museum Serlachius Manor & Museum Serlachius Headquarters (museum in the G.A. Serlachius paper company building), where regular art events are organised.

Since Riikka was worried about completing her painting, we talked while she was painting and I was sitting nearby watching her and listening to her.

Her painting was huge, going from the bottom to the top of the whole wall, probably more than 3 metres tall. It had 3 figures, a central figure of a woman with her head on the cushion at the top, covered by a blanket, a male figure on her left and a third male figure, near their feet, lying accross. All the three were sleeping and the top figure was only drawn in lines.

Talking With Riikka Lenkkeri

Riikka: If you don’t mind, I will continue working while we talk. Yesterday, I spent the whole day going to and coming back from Genova, where I wanted to meet some friends. I came back late at night. Today is Saturday and on Tuesday morning I will go back to Finland, so I have little time and a lot of work to do to finish this painting.

Sunil: Sure. Let us start with the place where you live in Finland. What kind of place is it?

Riikka: Mänttä is a very small place. It has artists, museums, art festivals and art related events. It is not along the way to somewhere famous, you come to Mänttä because you want to visit it. In some ways it is like Schio, it is an industrial town, important for its paper mills. Slowly people, especially young people were leaving and going to bigger towns, but the presence of art museums and the organisation of art festivals and art related events has helped to make it known and bring some people back to live there, it has helped in bringing life to the town.

Sunil: Tell me about this painting (left). I can see that it is about sleeping persons and I know that you have already done many paintings about sleeping people. Is that because in sleep we drop our masks, we are no longer posing, we are more exposed and vulnerable?

Riikka: This painting has a mother with her two sons, all three sleeping in one bed. I am interested in exploring the corporeality of the human body in my art and especially exploring it through sleep. I like real people in my art, people who can be fat or curvy, or old and tired, people who are being themselves and not putting on a show.

I prefer using oil colours but I can also experiment. In this painting, I am using acrylic colours as well as colours that are used in buildings, I bought these here from a local shop that sells paints for buildings.

Sunil: As a child did you also go to sleep with your parents?

Riikka: Yes, I did. There were four of us. I have an elder brother, I am the second and I have two younger brothers. When we were young, all four of us wanted to be in the bed with our parents but there was place only for one of us. So the first one who managed to get in the bed, stayed there, the other three had to sleep near the bed. There were thick carpets and sleeping on them was comfortable.

I did the same with my twins. They are grown up now but when they were young, both of them used to come to sleep in our bed. As they moved so much during the night, disturbing our sleep, sometimes my husband used to get up and shift to another bed.

Sunil: Is Mänttä also the place where you grew up?

Riikka: No, my father was a doctor and he was changing towns. I was born in Lapland. Then, when I was four years old, we moved to Mänttä, my youngest brother was born there.

Sunil: You did your art studies in Academia Legustica di Belle Arti in Genova, in north-wast Italy. How did that happen?

Riikka: From my childhood, I had decided that I am going to be an artist. I completed the high school diploma in an art school. After that I absolutely wanted to study in an art school outside Finland. It was in 1990s (1990-95) and I was fortunate that during that period they were promoting students to go to other countries in Europe. I got a loan for studying in Italy and I also received other support, so I decided to study at the Academia in Genova.

The main problem was that when I arrived in Genova, I did not know Italian. I was given a room and a few months to study the language. When they examined me, I think that my Italian was still not very good but they accepted me.

There in the Academy I studied a lot of different things, including the painting techniques from  the 15th to 17th centuries.

Sunil: After completing the Academy, did you start working as an artist or you did other work? Do you remember your first artwork that you sold?

Riikka: Yes, I started to work as an artist. When I was in school, there used to be events and exhibitions where the students could showcase their artworks and I had already done plenty of it. During those exhibitions, I think that I had already sold some of my artworks, and now I don’t remember which was my first artwork that was sold.

Sunil: Tell me about your husband. I have read that he was  modelling for you, is that true?

Riikka: Actually Sampsa is a photographer and film-maker. He has modelled for me many times. Often, male artists have used female models, painting them and sometimes having relationships with them, thinking of them as their muses.

I like the idea of reversing the gaze and look at a man as my muse and to look at him as a model.

When I was studying in Genova, I used to think that I will live in Italy, I will not go back to Finland. Instead, I was in Finland and I met Sampsa and so all my plans changed. He is from Mänttä, his family was closely linked to the  Serlachius paper mill, his uncle was an engineer there, while his father was a dentist. They had this big house in  Mänttä, it was for 2 families, now we have renovated it and modified it.

(Note: On Riikka’s website, there is an interesting piece of writing by Sampsa Virkajärvi about how he feels about being seen as model and how he can observe Riikka during that process)

Sunil: How is it being married to another artist? And your children, are they also artists?

Riikka: Actually Sampsa is very good, he shares all the work at home, otherwise with two children, it would have been difficult for me to be an artist.

My twins, when they were young, they tried making all the different kinds of art, but they were not interested in being an artist. One of them is working in a factory and the other one is at university, studying mathematics.

Sunil: Tell me about your influences?

Riikka: The artist who has been the biggest influence on me is the 15th century Italian artist Piero della Francesca (1412-92). I saw two of his paintings at the national gallery in London and they had a tremendous impact on me – the Nativity and the Baptism of Christ.

In the Nativity painting, it is the figure of Joseph that interested me (below). He is an old man, sitting and looking away from the viewers, his right leg is bent at the knee and placed over his left leg and we can see the sole of his foot. When I saw it, I understood how the physicality and the position of the figure is shown, in a way that showcases deeper aspects of the figure's lived life and experiences, not in an idealised way but as an ordinary human with his body.

In the Baptism painting (below), it is the figure of the man behind who is removing his shirt. Once again, its physicality struck me.

Those two paintings had very strong influence on me. That is what I want in my work, the physicality of our human bodies and body language that gestures to more complex interpretations about the subject. 

Sunil: This explanation gives us a key to look at your work and see what you want to transmit in your art. Thanks for sharing all this information and all the time you have given me. 

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Comic Art of Marco Rosestolato

In the recent Cosplay day held in Schio, I had talked to two writer-artists engaged in graphic books and comics. I have already written about my talk with Enrico ET Trentin.

Today, I want to write about the second writer-artist - Marco Rosestolato. The below image shows some examples of Marco's art-works (click on images for a bigger view).

Marco is a young artist and his artistic journey in the world of graphic and comic art started five years ago in 2021.  

Writer-Artist: Marco Rosestolato

About Marco: He is from Schio. Ever since he can remember, he was always passionate about comics and illustrated books. He started making artworks, when he was still young, as a self-taught artist.

Art Studies: When he was 23 years old, he joined a three-years long art course at the Comic-Art school in Padova.

After completing the course, he started making comics more seriously. He has participated in different comic-art competitions.

Important Works: Recently, he has worked hard to complete a graphic novel series called "Aiutaci Maestro" (Help Me Master), which he has published online. It is targeted at 16+ Young Adults.

"Help me Master" is about the monks of Gyaan Monastery, whose goal is gaining knowledge and reaching towards human perfection. The series is about their adventures in the  different dimensions of space-time continuum. (The image below has some examples of his work from this series).

He is very happy with the way the "Help me Master" has turned out. He looks at it as a first step of his carrier in the comic-art world. You can check this graphic novel series on Webtoons and Tapas.

Approach to Working: Marco uses a graphic tablet for designing, like a lot of modern graphic-artists. He finds it very practical and quicker for designing. At the same time, he also likes traditional drawing and art on paper and other materials.

Influences: As a reader, he defines himself as an omnivore in terms of the comics he reads and likes. He especially likes to look at the works of other young and emerging artists.

He thinks that it is great to have events like Cosplay in Schio, which allow him to interact with other kinds of artists, which can inspire him to trying new ideas and approaches in his art work.

Making a Living Out of Comic Art: Marco feels that having an economic success from making comic art is very difficult.  According to him, having success or not does not depend on having talent as an artist since he knows persons who are very talented but have not achieved a level of success.

His advise is to look at comic art as a creative way for young artists to explore self-expression, but not to think of it as a carrier. It helps in growing creatively, learning to express your ideas, and at the same time, to see what and how others are expressing themselves, to inspire others and to be inspired. His criteria for success is to see if you have something to say which is specific and honest, then you are a successful comic artist.

Marco's Art: You can see the examples of his artworks, how he designs his pages and how he develops his characters on his website as well as on his Instagram page.

In The End

It was wonderful to see how Marco has been able to follow his passion and develop as an artist. 

I feel that earlier it was more difficult to become a comic-writer-artist, because publishing comics is costly and finding a publisher and distributor is not easy. Today portals like Webtoon and Tapas, allow you to hone your skills, and if you are persistent, hard-working and talented, you can find your readers and followers. If you can persist, hopefully, one day a contract with an important publishing house may also come, but you can't plan that in today's world because technologies are changing so quickly and the impact of AI is difficult to foresee.

If you dream of writing and illustrating your own graphic books and comics, I hope that reading this post about Marco will inspire you to follow those dreams. As he says, it is difficult, if not impossible, to make a carrier out of this passion, but it is a great way to express your creativity.

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Comic Art of Enrico ET Trentin

At the recently concluded Schio Cosplay festival, Breganze Comics had organised some tables for artists involved in making comic-art, to showcase their art and some of their published books. During the festival, I was able to speak to two of those writer-artists: Enrico Trentin and Marco Rosestolato.

This blogpost is about Enrico ET Trentin and our discussions. I will write another post about Marco Rosestolato. The image below presents some examples of Enrico ET Trentin's art (click on the pics for a bigger view).

Let me start with an introduction to Breganze Comics, the local group in Alto Vicentino area, which brings together the different artists involved in making illustrated books.

Breganze Comics

This is the 50th anniversary year of the Breganze Comics, which brings together and promotes the so called, "ninth art", the art of creating comics. They organise exhibitions, meetings with the authors, comic-art courses in the schools, etc. and support the growth of new artists-authors.

Comic Art or Graphic Art

I feel that there is no right word which defines the work of the persons making comic-art - their work is not limited to making "comics" targeted at teenagers, some of the books are adult fiction. Perhaps that's why some of them prefer calling themselves Graphic artists.

However, many of them are not only artists, they are also the writers of their stories and some of them also publish their books. So a better description for them can be writer-artist-publisher.

Writer-Artist Enrico ET Trentin 

Enrico has an art diploma from the Art Institute of Nove (VI) and has been engaged in making comics since 2001. He prefers making comics on humorous themes.

Important works: He started as an author for a magazine called "Prezzemolo" distributed by the well-known Italian theme-park called Gardaland.

Usually, author-artists of comics remain hidden and people only see their work. However, in May 2004, Enrico started an experimental blog-strip called NestoRe, in which he became visible, as he interacted with the character of his strip, making comments and having a dialogue. This experiment became a big success as the NestoRe comic-strip was reproduced in a large number of magazines, books and anthologies, and his name became familiar. NestoRe has a Facebook page, where you can take a look at some of its illustrations. (image below, the cover of a NestoRe book)

The fame achieved through NestoRe, brought Enrico in contact with a well-known Italian rock-band music group called Elio e Le Storie Tese. He asked the members of the rock-group to design the NestoRe comic strip number one thousand. Later, he also wrote and illustrated a series of books titled, "Storie Tese Illustrate", an authorised biography of the rock-band in 4 volumes between 2013 to 2016. This major creative work of Enrico is spread over 1400 pages and took almost 10 years to do research, write and illustrate. These volumes were sold at the concerts of the rock-band. (Below: the covers of the 4 volumes of Storie Tese Illustrate)

Since, 2021, he is engaged in another series of comics called "Gli Erquloidi" (the title can be loosely translated as the The Herculoids) about a group of tired heroes. He had first started making this comic while he was studying at the art institute in Nove 38 years ago. For this work, he does everything, from writing and designing to page-layouts and publication design. So far 17 comics of this series have been published, with about 650 illustration-panels. He says that he still feels the same enthusiasm for these comics that he used to feel as a sixteen years old in the school. (Left - Enrico with some volumes of Erquloidi)

Becoming a Comic Writer-Artist:  Enrico says that before becoming a writer and artist, he was and continues to be an avid reader, reading different genres of books. From his childhood, he had a special passion for illustrated story books, which stimulated his fantasies and allowed him to explore the imaginary universes. From a passionate reader, it was a natural evolution, in trying to understand how such stories were constructed, designing them and slowly improving his skills.

He Reads:  Enrico started with humorous comics because he loves most reading them, though he reads all the different genres. Among the other comics he likes to read are the super-heroes of Marvel universe, the Japanese Manga comics, the heroes of Bonelli and different French-Belgian authors.

His Evolution As a Comic Writer-Artist: In all these years, he has continued to work with the humorous comics but instead of working on characters created by others (for example, Prezzemolo for Gardaland) to his own comic-strip (NestoRe), to illustration (Storie Tese Illustrate) and now the comic books (Gli Erqucloidi), bringing together the experience from the last 25 years.

Use of Technology in the Comic Art: Enrico says that computers, graphic tablets and programmes can be useful if one does not wish to design and colour on paper. He feels that those who are used to designing on paper with pencils and colours, can easily use the technology, but it does not work the other way round.

He is not hostile to use of technology, after years of designing on paper with the China ink, he started designing NestoRe strips almost entirely in digital format. He mixes his use of traditional artwork with technology, using sometimes paper and pen and sometimes computers. For example, he designs on paper, then scans and uses a graphic programme for page layout and inserting the text.

The Future with AI: Enrico feels that AI and comics are not a good combination. Comics, both for stories and illustrations, should remain with "natural intelligence". The text of the comics should reflect the ideas and personality of the author and not the ideas copied from others. He feels afraid that someone who has been trained on models of work of others, can copy and come out with something similar instead of expressing original ideas.

His ideas about the design are also similar. He would prefer an error in the anatomy or an unbalanced perspective, instead of creating by taking or copying pieces of works and styles of different artists. The comic should continue to be a personal message of its author, and not something prepared by a machine - then what would be the use of us humans and anyway, AI does not have a sense of humour.

You can check Enrico's work on his Instagram page, and Facebook page. 

In The End

I grew up reading the Phantom comics and occasionally, Archies. At that time, I was not aware of serious fiction in the form of graphic novels. While growing up, the general attitude was that comics are not "books", they are only timepass and somehow inferior.

I was introduced to the Manga comics by my son in Italy and I could understand its attraction for young readers. However, it was not until I met some writer-artists and saw the kind of creative work that goes into creating a comic and a graphic novel, that I understood its importance as an art-form.

I feel that persons engaged in writing and illustrating stories need to bring together the different sensibilities and skills of narrative writing, designing, illustrating, directing and shooting films, and to do all this requires a different kind of creativity.

It was a pleasure to meet Enrico ET Trentin and to learn about his experiences as a writer-artist. 

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