Amicale

In my paintings and sculptures, I have talked for more than 50 years about Human rights, which have been and continue to be permanently violated, by all the signatory countries from the beginning to the present day. I have strengthened my commitment to this topic since I moved to Nuremberg, the city of Human rights. Many of the 30 articles have reminded me of facts, stories, or events that I have partly experienced myself, just as each of us could certainly list numerous examples of disregard for human rights. As a former war child in Italy, it is a topic that is close to my heart and it concerns all of us, always and everywhere. Equally as often, my work deals with the Human duties compiled in 1997 in the Charter of the InterAction Council as a supplement to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by former statesmen such as Helmut Schmidt, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and Jimmy Carter, which were submitted to the United Nations. In my various creative processes and topics, the focus is always on the behavior of us human beings. My paintings, sculptures, planks, reliefs and, at present, my so-called “material cacophonous capriccio pictures” are political, critical or ironic and document incisive events while describing the action and history of our society. They transmit my considerations on life, on non-respect and hypocrisy regarding the interpretation of the 30 articles of Human Rights, on the simple complexity of our existence, on our unconscious trampling on the small grain of sand, called Earth. But as a professor of art history, of course, I do not forget what the French painter Paul Seurisier said, and which I have often explained to my students: a picture can show a landscape, a horse, a flower, a portrait, a philosophical or social theme; but what matters in the end is just the relationship between shapes and colors on a surface. More information about my work can be found on the website www.brunodatodi.de, in the book accompanying the exhibition on human rights in Nuremberg entitled "Heuchelei” (which you can leaf through on my website) and in the book "Von den Sternen zum Brot – a documentary about bruno da Todi ".