DIGITISM MANIFESTO

(THE ART OF FINGERS PAINTING)

Our epoch is characterised by great metamorphosis in what we call Visual Arts. Traditional and long term artistic categories have been overturned by new technologies and new languages bringing innovative techniques, diversified forms of expression and more complex aesthetic criteria. Nowadays we can clearly state that in Arts all hierarchies have been abolished and there is no more distinction between the different approaches. All techniques are equal, and everything is combined, although sometimes this cohesion generates confusion and uncertainty. Digitism is intended as a time of reflection and synthesis of this particular historical period, it is an “arte primigenia” a new and direct art, accessible and pure, ruled by the heart and Emotion.

DIGITISM IS:

EMOTIONAL ART: this art has its origins in a deep interest and involvement that attract other people’s attention, emotions, dispositions and behaviours. Emotions express a quiet state, total concentration, a way of prevailing reason for a full and harmonic synthesis between humans, nature and cosmos.
DIRECT ART: carried out at once, without intentional schemes (unplanned because inspired by events); Digitism is performed following the artist’s feelings and the emotional state which result from a particular experience or event. Emotion and spontaneity are two fundamentally connected moments, the latter is a consequence of the former.
MULTISENSORY ART: an art able to captivate and encourage, both in the artist and the public, the visual and tactile awareness, and the variety of emotions and feelings that we can describe as Multisensory. This last component is strongly innovative as it reveals real life moments and states of mind described by the artist, which the attentive and sensitive members of the public can re-elaborate and assimilate as their own.
TACTILE ART: the body is considered as the only instrument for expressing private feelings and emotions. Digitism refuses brush and spatula, or even preparatory drawing, creating the work of art using fingers only, forcing colours directly onto the canvas resulting in different kinds of compositions. Tactile art as the artist understands the language, voice, vibration and intensity of every colour. As a pianist uses fingers to change his interior world into music, chasing the notes on the piano, similarly the artist uses fingers to choose and shape the colour following his thoughts, moods and emotional states.
CHROMATIC ART: in Digitism the preparatory drawing disappears and everything is traced back and solved by colourfulness, in the enchanted twist of painting substance and chromatic sensuality. With his fingers the artist spreads the colour, he moulds it, shapes it, carves it, takes it out and brings it back. As once Kandinskij wrote in “Concerning the Spiritual in Art”, first published in 1910: “the soul is the piano with many chords. The artist is the hands which play touching one key or another on purpose to cause vibrations in the Soul.” Therefore the colour, together with the chromatic perception of the artist become the one and only character of this suggestive expression.
SYNCRETIC ART: syncretic art is the fusion of diverse styles and languages of creative gesture. Digitism is a syncretic art because it has different inspirations and styles originating in multiple character works. Various elements and expressions coexist in Digitism, ranging from figurative to abstract, up to informal. Each painting is unique, as the artist works in complete freedom, following one time flair and inspiration.
COSMIC ART: ability of fusing the “duality” of the human being (body and soul), with our environment and the entire universe. The first strong emotional feeling, together with tactile experience of the artistic work, generate in the artist a state of complete isolation from the real world, a condition of absolute safety in which the artist feels united with the cosmos. In Digitism body and soul (spirit) become fused together in an “unicum” of extraordinary expressive power.
CURRENT AND CONTEMPORARY ART: our time is more and more characterised by what we call “digital” (from Latin digitus, digitalis, finger), a technology centred on numbers that we “move” with our fingers. Finger movement was the first and oldest human language, a way of expressing needs, feelings and desires. This was the first and natural form of communication, as is demonstrated by the development of children’s minds before reaching the ability to speak.