I was born in 1966 in Venice, the son of a visionary Venetian entrepreneur. Since childhood, I have always loved drawing, art subjects and sports. When I was 10 years old, together with my family, I left Venice to follow my father Marco on an entrepreneurial adventure in the “terraferma.” Yes, because in Venice the hinterland is called that: terraferma.
I remained there until the age of 25, but always maintained strong emotional and artistic ties with my hometown. I continued my studies regularly, although I wanted to go to art school, but my father prevented me from doing so. Those were the heroin years, and perhaps that was why he was so concerned. Thus, I obtained a technical high school diploma as a surveyor.
In 1984, the day after my high school graduation exam, without even knowing the grade, I left with my best friend for France. The destination was Dunkirk, but passing through Paris I saw the Eiffel Tower for the first time and was fascinated by that iron structure, so light but at the same time majestic. Perhaps it was a sign of fate. What was supposed to be a short trip turned into an entire summer. It was one of the best trips of my life.
Back in Italy, I worked in Murano as an art glass salesman, but I soon realized that to realize my dreams I would have to follow in my father’s footsteps. So, I went to work with him in the field of silver and jewelry sales. I enrolled in the Faculty of Arts at Cà Foscari, majoring in History of Art and Goldsmithing, but I did not graduate. In 1994 I opened my first store on Calle dei Boteri in Venice, Italy, and in the same year I earned the title of gemologist at the Gemological Institute of America in Vicenza, Italy.
The following year I won a European scholarship and graduated as a goldsmith model maker, taking evening classes at IRIGEM in Rosà, in the province of Vicenza. The same year I made the jewelry for the Teatro La Fenice. Thanks to these specializations, in 1996 I was called to join the board of appraisers and experts of the Camera di Commercio di Venezia and began to acquire important signed and antique jewelry.
In 1998 I attended a marketing course for jewelry manufacturers at SDA Bocconi in Milan, where I had the opportunity to meet some of Italy’s greatest jewelers. In the 2000s, I did numerous appraisals of glass objects by Carlo Scarpa and immediately fell in love with them. That unique and unmistakable style struck me deeply, and it was natural for me to recognize in Scarpa the master of many of the greatest designers of the last century.
Alongside jewelry making, I have always cultivated a passion for antiques, art history and design. I participated twice in the Fuori Salone in Milan, Jewellery Design Week and Venice Design Week in 2021. In 2022 I embarked on a new experience in lighting, designing a sculpture lamp for Cleto Munari Lux, inspired by a stylema by Alessandro Mendini, which I presented at the Fuori Salone in Milan.
Since then I have been running my own gallery in Venice, where I pursue collaborations with international artists and carry out my own projects, developing them together with local masters and professionals in the field.
In 2018, I returned to Paris to see Amore e Psiche, Antonio Canova’s masterpiece on display at the Louvre, and fell hopelessly in love with it. Returning from France, I visited the Possagno Gypsoteca to further study this extraordinary artist and his works.
It was then, in his birthplace, that I noticed an unusual symbol painted on a mantelpiece: an uroboros, the serpent biting its tail, an ancient Greek emblem of eternity and the endless cycle of life. Within it were depicted the three fundamental tools of the art of painting and sculpture: the brush, the palette knife, and the awl. With this logo, Canova evoked the rebirth of ancient Greek masterpieces and the continuity of art through time.
At that time I was working on my first cubist prototypes in Murano glass and my futurist lamps. That discovery was a revelation: I decided to stylize Canova’s logo as a symbol of my art with the intention of giving new life to his sculptures and those of the great masters of the past, reinterpreting them in a contemporary way.