Piccaia: L’Armonia dei Numeri allo Sheraton Milano Malpensa
Piccaia: L’Armonia dei Numeri
La Sequenza di Fibonacci (Fibonacci tour)
A cura di Melania Rocca e Chiara Alberghina
Sheraton Milan Malpensa, Terminal 1
23 aprile – fine agosto 2026
Ingresso gratuito
“Le mie opere sono sempre in viaggio (Fibonacci tour), ora approdano allo Sheraton Malpensa - Terminal 1, per poi chissà, decollare per altri lidi. É un percorso continuo alla ricerca di uno spazio dove atterrare. È come se stessero cercando il centro di gravità permanente di gurdjieffiana memoria. I numeri della successione si sommano in un viaggio interminabile ma finito nella proporzione divina.” Giorgio Piccaia
La mostra “L’armonia dei numeri” di Giorgio Piccaia allo Sheraton Milan Malpensa è una tappa del Fibonacci tour. Nell’atrio e primo piano dell’albergo, dal 23 aprile fino a fine agosto, sono esposte una selezione di opere dell’artista italo svizzero ispirate dalla sequenza del matematico pisano.
La scelta di esporre le opere di Piccaia in una contesto aeroportuale “significa mettere in relazione due sistemi apparentemente distanti ma strutturalmente affini: da un lato, una pratica artistica fondata su logiche generative e progressive; dall’altro, un’infrastruttura che organizza il movimento attraverso sequenze, flussi e soglie” (Chiara Alberghina).
“Nel 2018 - scrive Melania Rocca, curatrice della mostra con Chiara Alberghina - Piccaia riscopre Leonardo Pisano detto Fibonacci, e da allora non ha più smesso di dipingere numeri, quelli della nota “Sequenza”. Essi sono diventati la costante del suo lavoro artistico. I numeri, lungi dall’essere freddi e astratti, nella pittura di Piccaia vengono rappresentati in modo armonioso e poetico”.
E così scriveva il compianto e mai dimenticato Francesco Cevasco, giornalista del Corriere: “L’impossibile che resta tale finché per la prima volta si avvera, la matematica che diventa estetica, il canto dei numeri e dei ritmi cosmici che rimbalzano dall’infinito ieri all’infinito domani... E quel Fibonacci che gira nella testa e nel cuore, nell’anima e tra le mani di Giorgio Piccaia. Una ispirazione che viene da
lontano. Tempi di studi giovanili, quando il maestro di oggi era un buon allievo
(ma soltanto in matematica). Gli bastava ascoltare le interrogazioni degli altri e
poi la sua era da voto 9. Scritto in numeri arabi, quelli che Fibonacci aveva
imposto aggiungendo lo 0”.
Nelle tele, le carte, gli acetati e sculture come spiega Manuela Boscolo - “pulsa una numerologia occulta, non intesa come semplice gioco esoterico, ma come grammatica segreta dell’universo: i numeri diventano segni archetipici, vibrazioni che strutturano lo spazio pittorico e suggeriscono un ordine nascosto”.
Carlotta Cernigliaro scrive nel catalogo: “Queste composizioni di Piccaia elaborate e stratificate traggono la loro vitalità dalla sequenza di Fibonacci, il “codice aureo” che governa la crescita organica. Attraverso gesti decisi, ma attenti e ripetuti nel tempo, i numeri trascendono la fredda astrazione per diventare elementi ritmici: danzano sulla tela, sovrapponendosi in un gioco di trasparenze e densità cromatiche che suggerisce una ricerca di equilibrio spirituale”.
“Il progetto dell’artista - dice Giampaolo Cantini, ex ambasciatore italiano al Cairo - è debitore verso l'Egitto. Nel 2018, Piccaia ha viaggiato in questo paese vasto e stratificato storicamente, visitando l'antico Monastero di Santa Caterina nel Sinai. Lì ha incontrato il monaco Gregory Sinayte, con cui ha riflettuto sulla successione di Fibonacci, offrendo all'artista spunti, riferimenti e intuizioni che avrebbero ulteriormente alimentato sia la sua ricerca che la sua pratica artistica”.
Questa esposizione è la continuazione del Fibonacci tour di Piccaia, vista in diverse città (Chiasso, Varese, Como, Milano, Venezia…). Come non ricordare la super mostra del 2022/23 a Pisa, invitato dall’assessore al turismo Paolo Pesciatini che così ricorda l’evento: “…Per questo motivo la città che ha dato i natali a Fibonacci, primo algebrista cristiano, maggior genio scientifico del XIII secolo ha voluto ospitare in 21 (numero della serie) palazzi cittadini l’opera e la ricerca di Giorgio Piccaia che ha posto al centro della sua espressione artistica la figura e la sequenza del nostro illustre concittadino, diventandone elemento distintivo e caratterizzante del suo stile…”.
“Ospitare “L’armonia dei numeri” di Giorgio Piccaia allo Sheraton Milan Malpensa rientra in un percorso culturale condiviso con SEA, - spiega Silver Carpanese, General manager dell’albergo - costruito negli anni con l’obiettivo di valorizzare l’arte contemporanea in un contesto non convenzionale come quello aeroportuale e alberghiero: un luogo di incontro del mondo”.
Il pittore e scultore Giorgio Piccaia nasce a Ginevra, in Svizzera, nel 1955, e vive e lavora ad Agrate Conturbia, in Piemonte. Suo padre Matteo, anch’egli artista, lo porta con lui giovanissimo negli ambienti artistici della città del lago Lemano e successivamente di Milano.
Tre incontri hanno segnato la sua arte: il primo con John Cage, durante l’iconico concerto al Teatro Lirico di Milano nel 1977, e il secondo con Jerzy Grotowski, con cui lavorò al Teatro Laboratorio di Wrocław nel 1978 e il terzo, nel 2018, con il monaco Gregory Sinayte nel monastero di Santa Caterina del Sinai.
La spoliazione del superfluo, una tecnica ispirata da questi due maestri, è ancora oggi la caratteristica predominante dell’arte di Piccaia. Nei primi anni Ottanta frequentò i corsi di Corrado Levi presso la Facoltà di Architettura di Milano, un incontro fondamentale che gli permise, dopo aver lavorato sul corpo attraverso performance e happening, di affermarsi nella pittura e nelle arti visive.
Testi critici di: Silver Carpanese, General Manager Sheraton Malpensa; Paolo Pesciatini, assessore al turismo del Comune di Pisa; Melania Rocca, curatore; Chiara Alberghina, Arts and Cultural Projects Sea Malpensa; Giampaolo Cantini, ambasciatore; Carlotta Cernigliaro, presidente Zero gravità Villa Cernigliaro per arti e culture; Manuela Boscolo, critica; Claudia Cazzaniga, critica; Francesco Cevasco, giornalista.
Patrocini: Comune di Pisa, Fondazione Donà dalle Rose, Zero gravità Villa Cernigliaro per arti e culture, Villa Porto Rapallo/Piccaia Museum, Alpi-Associazione Libera Per l’Insubria.
Media Partner: BeBeez
Sponsor tecnico: Olg Fine Art Services
Per informazioni stampa e contatti: roccamelania@gmail.com
Sito web: www.giorgiopiccaia.com
 |
| Giorgio Piccaia e il suo trittico Sequenza (Marina uno, Luna azzurra e marina due) |
Note critiche in inglese
The Rhythm of Travel
The exhibition “The Harmony of Numbers” at Sheraton Milan Malpensa is the latest chapter in a longterm cultural dialogue with SEA, rooted at fostering contemporary art in unconventional crossroads like airports and hospitality venues. Over time, this partnership has grown through a carefully curated program of artists and projects, creating opportunities for guests and travelers to discover, engage, and connect - true to our Brand promise as “The World’s Gathering Place”. A place where the world comes together. The exhibition features a set of artistic pieces by Giorgio Piccaia, drawing inspiration from the Fibonacci sequence and a vision of harmony that bridges nature, science, and creative expression. A flow of artworks that naturally interact with the Hotel environment, a space defined by travel and transition. Here, art becomes a companion to the journey, enhancing every guest’s stay with added meaning and lasting impressions. With this initiative, Sheraton Milan Malpensa underscores its commitment to supporting cultural projects that resonate with a broad, international audience through a direct and authentic voice.
Silver Carpanese, General Manager, Sheraton Malpensa
April 8, 2026
Giorgio Piccaia “The Harmony of Numbers” at the Sheraton Malpensa
I have been following the artistic work of Giorgio Piccaia for several years, and I have always been fascinated by his ability to stand out by continually finding new sources of inspiration. Since 2018, the year he formed a friendship with a monk from the Monastery of Saint Catherine and rediscovered Leonardo Pisano, known as Fibonacci, he has never stopped painting numbers, those of the well-known “Sequence.” They have become the constant of his artistic practice.
Far from being cold and abstract, numbers in Piccaia’s paintings are portrayed in a harmonious and poetic way. It is also interesting to observe the results they produce across the various supports he uses to depict them, whether painted on canvas, papyrus, bark, acetate, or plexiglass. The impact is always an explosion of color and movement.
In this exhibition hosted at the Sheraton Milan Malpensa Airport Hotel, it will be intriguing to see how viewers engage with this imaginative numerical world. Many will surely exclaim, as often happens, “Why so many, only numbers?” The answer had already been given long ago by the famous ancient Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras, who stated that “everything in nature is number.” Through the number, the artist thus offers his own personal representation.
Melania Rocca, curator
April 9, 2026
Sequences in Transit: The Generative Order of Giorgio Piccaia in the Airport Space
Placing Giorgio Piccaia’s work within an airport context means bringing into relation two systems that are seemingly distant yet structurally akin: on the one hand, an artistic practice grounded in generative and progressive logics; on the other, an infrastructure that organizes movement through sequences, flows, and thresholds.
In Piccaia’s case, the reference to the Fibonacci sequence does not end with a formal suggestion but constitutes the operational principle of the work, where the numerical sequence becomes a generative matrix: modules, signs, and fields develop according to logics of incremental growth, giving rise to configurations that never appear as closed compositions, but as expanding systems. This processual dimension finds a particularly effective field of resonance in the airport space.
The airport, in fact, is a device that structures experience through a concatenation of passages—entry, control, waiting, boarding—in which each phase derives from the previous one and prepares for the next. As in the Fibonacci sequence, the system grows through addition, building a progression that the passenger often traverses without consciously perceiving its logic.
Piccaia’s works intercept and reflect this condition. The modular repetition that characterizes them does not produce uniformity, but difference: each element, while deriving from a common scheme, introduces a variation that alters the overall balance. From this emerge complex structures that evoke organic dynamics and suggest potentially unlimited growth.
It is precisely in this shift that the intervention assumes critical value. If the airport tends to reduce experience to a linear trajectory oriented toward optimizing flows, Piccaia’s work reintroduces a dimension of complexity, depth, and articulation, making the process visible where it is usually invisible. The Fibonacci sequence, as translated by the artist, thus becomes a tool for questioning the very nature of the systems that regulate contemporary movement.
From this perspective, Giorgio Piccaia’s works do not interrupt the airport flow, nor do they merely accompany it. They duplicate it, make it legible, and partly destabilize it by introducing a minimal yet significant deviation—a moment in which the strength of the intervention is perceived: in the ability to transform a place of pure transit into a space where growth, time, and movement are once again perceived, rather than simply passed through.
Chiara Alberghina, Arts and Cultural Projects Sea Malpensa
April 8, 2026
The Sacred Language of Number
The language of Giorgio Piccaia’s paintings is striking because it confronts us with a symbolic vision of existence. His symbolism does not explain, it reveals. What could be more ordinary and at the same time more mysterious than numbers? His mathematical signs, his vibrations of shapes and colors, are an invitation to lose oneself in the hidden harmony of nature. The artist’s approach to a deep dialogue with the universe, not as mere spectators, but as living parts of an unstoppable flow—challenges us and invites us to question ourselves, making Giorgio Piccaia an artist with a distinctive character who defies easy categorizations in order to restore a breath of the sacred to contemporary art.
Claudia Cazzaniga
April 8, 2026
Where Numbers Become Beauty
The city of Pisa, every 23rd November, celebrates the days dedicated to Leonardo Pisano, known as Fibonacci, because the date 11/23, according to the American format, recalls the first numbers of his famous numerical sequence, which is closely linked to the golden ratio. The relationships it reveals are truly extraordinary in illustrating the connections between nature and human creations. In fact, if one takes the ratio between any number in the Fibonacci sequence and the preceding one, the result increasingly approximates the golden number (phi) as one progresses through the terms of the series. The sequence of Leonardo Pisano and the golden ratio thus manifest themselves spectacularly in an endless variety of phenomena and contexts, such as music, the harmony of nature, and the visual arts.For this reason, the city that gave birth to Fibonacci, the first Christian algebraist and the greatest scientific genius of the 13th century, who here encountered Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, stupor mundi, has chosen to host, in 21 (a number from the sequence) historic city palaces, the work and research of Giorgio Piccaia. In his artistic expression, Piccaia has placed at the center the figure and sequence of this illustrious fellow citizen, making it a distinctive and defining element of his style, and a path leading toward the search for the meaning of being, beauty, Nature, and creation. Finally, I would like to recall the words of the late and incomparable Luca Beatrice, who in recent years was also connected to Pisa. In Piccaia’s language, he identified the return of the “logos, the primary act of knowledge, wisdom, beauty, strength, terms that are concealed, hidden beneath the texture of his painting as undeclared yet ever-present sources of inspiration,” much like the numerous real-world applications in which the remarkable cognitive revolution of the great Pisano can be observed.
Paolo Pesciatini
Tourism Councillor of the Municipality of Pisa
April 9, 2026
A subtle canvas
A subtle canvas underlies Giorgio Piccaia’s work on the Fibonacci sequence: the Mediterranean, with its dense web of cultural, human, and social relations that have intertwined over centuries. At the end of the twelfth century, in present-day Algeria, the young Leonardo Fibonacci encountered Arab mathematicians and, through them, the Hindu–Arabic numeral system later introduced to Europe in his Liber Abaci (1202), a work that transformed mathematics and its countless applications. He later travelled extensively across the Mediterranean and the Middle East, experiences that contributed to the elaboration of the sequence at the core of Piccaia’s research. Egypt, too, is part of this broader context. During a journey in 2018, Piccaia engaged in a dialogue with a monk at the Monastery of Saint Catherine in Sinai, reflecting on art, science, religion, and mathematics, including the Fibonacci sequence.
Another thread in the Mediterranean canvas underlying his work.
Giampaolo Cantini
April 9, 2026
The golden rythm of nature
The solo exhibition by Giorgio Piccaia at the Sheraton Milan presents a profound exploration of the intersection between mathematical order and aesthetic harmony. This collection of medium-to-large-scale oils on canvas welcomes into a universe where the pictorial mark interprets the universal laws of nature.
These elaborate, layered compositions draw their vitality from the Fibonacci sequence, the "golden code" that governs organic growth. Through decisive gestures, but careful and repeated over and over again, numbers transcend cold abstraction to become rhythmic elements; they dance across the canvas, overlapping in a play of transparency and chromatic density that suggests a quest for spiritual balance.
Alongside this numerology, the delicate symbol of the Myosotis appears. This five-petaled flower serves as a visual confirmation of the golden ratio; each petal and natural symmetry dialogues with the surrounding figures, unifying the macrocosm of calculation with the floral microcosm. Piccaia’s work transforms the rigor of numerical succession into a meditative act, suggesting that aesthetics is the visible manifestation of a metaphysical structure that orders the world's chaos. Through this balance, the artist reminds us that every fragment of reality—from a tiny petal to the vastness of the cosmos—is interconnected by a silent, universal language.
Carlotta Cernigliaro, Zero gravità Villa Cernigliaro per arti e culture, president
April 8, 2026
Aesthetics of Knowledge by Giorgio Piccaia
Giorgio Piccaia’s painting moves like a symbolic device in which form becomes a gateway to what is not immediately visible. At the core of his work pulses an occult numerology, not intended as a simple esoteric game, but as a secret grammar of the universe: numbers become archetypal signs, vibrations that structure the pictorial space and suggest a hidden order. This tension toward the invisible intertwines with an aesthetic we might define as one of knowledge, where every pictorial gesture seems to question the very possibility of knowing. Piccaia’s surfaces do not illustrate concepts—they evoke them: they are mental maps, intuitive diagrams, attempts to give shape to what precedes language.
The form of knowledge in his paintings is never rigid; it is an organism in transformation, a field of forces that embraces symbol, rhythm, and repetition. His geometries, often essential, function as portals: they invite the viewer into a contemplative experience in which seeing transforms into understanding. In this sense, Piccaia’s painting does not represent the world, but deciphers it. Each canvas becomes an exercise in attention, an invitation to recognize that knowledge is not merely the accumulation of information, but a sensitive, almost meditative process. Thus, numbers, signs, and fields of color merge into a language that seeks unity between perception and thought, between matter and spirit.
Manuela Boscolo
April 8, 2026
Giorgio Piccaia: Mathematics becomes aesthetics
The impossible remains impossible until, for the first time, it becomes reality; mathematics transforms into aesthetics, the song of numbers and cosmic rhythms bouncing from infinite yesterday to infinite tomorrow… And then there is Fibonacci, spinning in the mind and heart, in the soul and in the hands of Giorgio Piccaia. An inspiration that comes from afar. Times of youthful study, when today’s master was a good student (but only in mathematics). It was enough for him to listen to other students’ oral exams, and then his own would earn a grade of 9. Written in Arabic numerals, the ones Fibonacci had introduced by adding zero.
Even now, even here, numbers parade through Piccaia’s works. Yet they climb freely along these walls. The artist respects their sign and plunges into their meaning, but he also gives them a spiritual glance, an esoteric breath. It seems as though he shatters them across the many canvases that, in reality, form a single segment of an infinite sequence.
To his identity as an artist, Piccaia adds—without false modesty—“free thinker”; he enjoys accumulation: painter, sculptor, creator of installations, ceramist, architect, student of Jerzy Grotowski. From the Polish director he inherited the concept that what matters is the relationship and dialogue with your audience, not the seductive trappings you build around them in a theater or exhibition space.
Omnivorous, he masters every material: he cooks ceramics, makes canvases rise, stuffs plexiglass, gives shape and third dimension to color. And light explodes.
Francesco Cevasco (Corriere della Sera)
October 2020
About Giorgio Piccaia
The painter and sculptor Giorgio Piccaia was born in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1955, and he currently lives and works in Agrate Conturbia, Piedmont, Italy. His father was also an artist and, together with him, he was connected to artistic circles in Geneva and later in Milan.
Two encounters marked his art: the first one was the meeting with John Cage, during the iconic concert at Teatro Lirico in Milan in 1977, and the second one was with Jerzy Grotowski, with whom he worked at the Laboratory Theater in Wroslaw in 1978.
The stripping away of the non-essential, a technique inspired by these two masters, is still the prominent feature of Piccaia's art today. In the early 1980s he attended Corrado Levi's classes at the Faculty of Architecture in Milan, a seminal encounter that allowed him, after working on the body with performances and happenings, to establish himself in painting and visual arts.
In 2018, during his exchanges with Gregory Sinaite, a Greek Orthodox monk whom he met during a trip to St. Catherine's Monastery in Sinai, Egypt, he discussed about art and rediscovered the figure of Leonardo Pisano, also known as Fibonacci, a mathematician from the early Middle Ages.
Currently, his artistic project is connected to the numbers of the Fibonacci Sequence and to myosotis flowers, which Giorgio Piccaia describes as capable of "bringing me back to the simplicity of Nature and the rediscovery of Happiness."
Website: www.giorgiopiccaia.com - +39 335 7407666/5
Commenti
Posta un commento