This seems quite obvious. Yet the problem is more complex. Painting is involved with matter and so are painters. This body concerns ourselves and our own body because we are made of the same matter, and we are fragile and mortal like everything that is living. In fact painting is a living thing, and its life depends precisely on its material condition.
Painters have a double feeling about matter.
They are both attracted and repelled by it. Sometimes painters lose their childlike simplicity and are disgusted by matter. So, it was with this double feeling that I was always attracted to matter. At the beginning of my education I was studying Latin literature at the University of Rome, and, at the same time, I was visiting frequently the places where relics of Roman art are preserved. I remember very well the impression I got from those ruined walls, on which one can see some fragments of painting, figures of Gods or mysterious and imaginary landscapes.