Exhibition Daniele Steardo. Present moments

Among authentic artists, those who speak to us and who last, history always repeats itself: dazzling gifts, spotted early! Daniele Steardo, born in Genoa in 1976, is no exception to the rule. From as far as he can remember, he sees himself, holding a pencil and drawing figures. He is reminded of when he scraped the earth, at age four, sat in the family’s vineyard, on the Piedmont hillside. Precise gestures, endlessly repeated. Gestures already expressing the carver he would become, able to transform a fifteen-ton marble into a supple and light sheet. Because this is what Daniele Steardo turns out to be: a sculptural prodigy consecrated in 2006, when he unveiled his first public commission for the Bruzzano cemetery in Milan.

Sometimes bathers, scenes of life, lovers; sometimes portraits, still lifes. Characters exactly depicted, moments subtly suspended, nonetheless instiled by its own breath, indescribable and significant. In one word, an atmosphere, that of the present moment, barely disrupted by the gestures of an exceptional artist never forgetting that he carves stone as well. That he knots and unknots pieces of clay, like he knots and unknots the anatomies that he draws. “I am so modern that I want to be so with those who will be the modern artists of tomorrow”, warns, one day in a rage, the inimitable Modigliani (he was fighting with Fernand Léger). Daniele Steardo, trained in classical schools, understood the message. He is one of the modern artists of tomorrow.