Italian artist turns walls into supersize canvases
Print Edition
ITALIAN artist Franceso Camillo Giogino, known as Millo, has created an 18-meter-high and six-meter wide mural on the outer wall of a local kindergarten on Xiangnan Road in Pudong.
The work features a dreamland of a Chinese boy and is part of the “Color, Way of Love Art +,” welfare project, initiated by Nippon China in 2015.
Born in Italy in 1979, Millon has taken part in several street art festivals around Europe.
He prefers to use simple black and white lines with dashes of color and he incorporates elements of architecture into his multi-story paintings.
Standing on a crane and working for many hours a day, Millo’s fever toward his new work is obvious.
Since he is creating the work at a local kindergarten, the local children are his first audience.
“I know the local children are watching every day and sometimes I hear ‘what is the foreigner doing on the crane’ from my translator,” he said, “This is a meaningful thing for me. Maybe I can help their imagination through my work, which might initiate them to embark on a road of art in the future. Who knows?”
Following the project in Shanghai, Millo will move to Suzhou, where he will paint on the wall of a school for children of migrant workers there.
Q: Do you still remember when you first painted a mural on a wall and what it was about?
My first wall was 5 years ago in Italy. It was about a big boy playing in the city.
Q: Compared with traditional painting, what’s the main attraction for you to create artwork on walls?
Painting in the street makes me feel like a small part of everyday reality. It’s a completely different experience from when I realize canvases in my studio. In my studio I’m alone with my thoughts, my brushes and my ideas. In the street, everything surrounds me and even if it’s more complicated to find a balance, it’s an amazing experience.
Q: In your eyes, what’s more important: technique or content?
The technique helps me to realize the content, but without content, a strong idea behind it will have no meaning.
Q: When you create something on the wall, do you frequent the place and its surrounding to choose the appropriate subject, do make a detailed draft before, or do you just create spontaneously?
Usually when I arrive in a foreign country, I prefer to spend some days looking around to better understand the place and to create something unique, strictly connected to the place.
Q: There’s always a boy or a girl in your paintings.
All of my works have a different message, and the boy and the girl are the emotional level of my works. The most beautiful thing is that everybody can see in him or her whatever they want. Frequently, people ask me if the boy or the girl is sad, or happy, or if it’s human or an alien ... it’s a representation of our purest part, a reminder of what we might have forgotten in our daily life.
Q: Some of your murals might be erased in the future. Will you feel regret about this?
No, it’s part of the game. When I realize my works I already know that it will happen some day. I obviously hope as later as possible.
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