LEOLEO – The Artist Speaks, Stefano Bressani speaks from outside his own body, observing himself from a hemisphere that does not exist. He becomes his own critic, describing himself and his work, removed from the profane world and close to the absence of absolutist concepts, as if he were another entity, halfway between the present and the future—a state awaiting anyone who challenges themselves daily and embraces a significant undertaking such as this.

His words, today, are the most precious resource for this work; no one better than he can recount the intricate, hidden threads that guide the choices, thoughts, and actions leading to the creation of the ARTWORK.

«I am Stefano Bressani, and I address the Genius of all time: Leonardo da Vinci.

I admire you, brilliant and multifaceted friend—you were painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, mathematician, anatomist, musician, and inventor. One of the greatest architects of the Renaissance and among the most extraordinary minds in history.

Endowed with unparalleled intelligence and an insatiable thirst for knowledge. Your legacy holds immeasurable value, spanning centuries—from the past, through the present, yours and ours, into the future—a continuum of spatiotemporal positions that remain ever-inspiring and endlessly thought-provoking.

If I were an art scholar, I would begin by stating that I am an inventor and founding father of a unique Technique, which, in my life, coincidentally mirrored certain lines of Leonardo’s own path.

I imagine us as two children driven by curiosity, indifferent to the common interests of our peers, drawn instead to experimentation through direct experience. I cannot know if Leonardo shared my fascination with nature, my love of fire, the discovery of the Body, mechanics, or the elements of Air and Water—but perhaps he felt similarly about the Great Masters of his own past.

My passion for experimentation has accompanied me throughout my life, complementing my work both as a mechanical designer and later as I rediscovered my poetic and artistic vein each day—trapped within a world that did not belong to it.

I awoke from the monotony of an office, hearing the echo of a calling: to pursue my dreams despite lacking the financial means to embrace a change that would make me independent. This led to the founding of my “Workshop.”

Only today do I realize that I have been a contemporary self-made man, unaware of the path I was forging—a path that has become my greatest strength: determined and fearless in the face of labor, driven by a work ethic embedded deep within my DNA.

This is how I became the Master of Fabrics, living a constant inner Renaissance, guided by vocation, and compelled to demonstrate to myself and others that courage and enthusiasm can become explosive fuel for ideas.

I have honed my craft, learning to blend the Artist’s Dreams with experience, labor, dedication, and, why not, the entrepreneurial practicality that is intrinsic to me. My biography is rich with realized ideas across Art, Design, and Fashion—perhaps it is this sheer diversity of approaches that allows me to envision myself as the child who grew up with Leonardo’s eyes.

I have reflected deeply on this connection: the innate desire of an Artist to Experiment without documentation, relying solely on personal experience and ideas, which sometimes remained in dormant projects, and sometimes, even unbeknownst to me, resulted in the uniqueness of creations never realized by others—just as happened with my own technique.

It is precisely this temporal dialogue that allowed me to measure myself against Leonardo, pushing beyond information. I encapsulated within a single “head” the Artwork that today, on the 500th anniversary of Leonardo, stands as a contemporary testament in the Leonardo Year.

Everything begins with the Name, which contemporary culture allows us to play with, to twist, and to ironize—perhaps much like the “Poetic License” artists of the past claimed.

Today, among friends, Leonardo would have been “LEO” in 1980s Milan, during the height of my adolescence… The first idea: take the name, dissect it, deconstruct it, transform it into a nickname, and mirror it in homage to Leonardo’s own writings. Studying the figures that unite the protagonists of this story revealed the need to balance mirrored letters, reflecting the hemispheres of the brain, right and left, responsible for aptitudes and the assignments the human body follows in its genetic predispositions.

Is LEOLEO human? Is LEOLEO a robot? An icon? Or something else entirely? It is an artwork designed to capture attention and to proclaim, in its apparent stillness, that humanity no longer shares Leonardo’s ideals—unfortunately. Our era is silent; we do not experience a Renaissance because it is no longer available to us. Yet the duty of the Artist compelled me to envision a different reality, transcending moral, theological, and political boundaries.

LEOLEO is the culmination of knowledge, thought, ideas, technique, experimentation, color, and material—a game that I like to think Leonardo himself would have appreciated. A homage rich in meaning, to be understood and valued; therein lies the true treasure of the Artist at work.“

Captions:

The Head

“As some of you may know, this is not the first head I have created… I have made many artist heads, combining my interest in anatomy with my identity as an artist.
Yet this one is unique—this head spins, never stops, much like my own mind, which, in creating this emblematic casket, and yours, in attempting to understand it, rotates in balance.”

Decomposition

“Yes, I know, I could have created something simpler, or a large-scale work to honor the great Leonardo, but I think of him as a man, filled with layers that descend into a rare depth within the human being. And then… you know I work with decomposition… I couldn’t resist the idea of lifting the veil of flesh that hides the ingenuity of an extraordinary man.
I sliced Leonardo at 90° to express his free vision, positioning different textures as only my beloved technique allows, to play with him, dissect and synthesize him, revealing the concentrated ideas contained within his mind.”

The Eyes

“Eyes have always been very important to me. In LEOLEO they protrude from their sockets, as if surprised by my operation. The eyeballs have two different colors: the larger blue eye reflects the sky, the element of air without limits—a void into which Leonardo, like me, placed all his interest.
The left eye is the color of earth, grounded thought, accessing the brain’s calculations and planning.
In them I find the essence of belonging: two colors for two hemispheres and multiple concepts.”

The Right Hemisphere

“The right hemisphere is devoted to art, imagination, and tactile analysis. Its frontal part bears the icon of the red head, symbolizing passion. The mind wanders, carried by the idea of a humanoid robot stripped of its skin.
I like to highlight everything—but that does not mean it is easily readable. The right hemisphere conceals solid details in their deliberate incoherence.”

The Toy Soldiers

“At the base of the right hemisphere are toys. I believe every child of my generation played with these charming plastic soldiers. Here, they become an offbeat company: men using ingenuity to compensate for limited physical strength.
The soldier on the tank, ironic and overbearing, boasts physical dominance, self-celebrating his assisted power over a world that, on equal footing, would crush him, exposing his frailty in the game of ‘who’s got the biggest’.
But why are they there? Shouldn’t they belong to the technical, concrete, mathematical realm? I placed them there because I believe it is their rightful place.”

The Brain

“At the back of the right hemisphere, I recreated the brain—an organic machine, a living mind. I drew from the past to propose it in a futuristic play. It is connected to war inventions, conceived as results of mathematical studies: man first understands, then acts and constructs. That band performing with cannon fire, bullets, and grenades is placed consciously, expressing the link to Leonardo’s vision…”

The LAN Connection

“Among ironic, iconic connections, there is the LAN connection—a contemporary reference, a passage and a link. Through it, my perspective changes; my eye shifts, seeking color and industrialized synapses that connect black toys, foreshadowing interruptions of harmony, of the calm of reasoning… fly with me to the left hemisphere…”

The Jet Fighter

“It soars into the sky, and I with it, and you with me. The jet fighter crosses the head’s boundaries, reminding me once again that the sky has no limits—or at least none can be drawn with absolute precision. It too is the result of calculation, a realized dream of Leonardo’s: to reach the heavens.”

The Left Hemisphere

“Through this dream, in my usual incoherence, I lead you into the hemisphere of technique and concreteness—the left.
I dig into LEOLEO’s head again and find a cranial shell that does not correspond to human anatomy: gray, metallic, strong as titanium, mysterious as if from another world. I imagine a time-traveling Leonardo and a contemporary ‘LEO’.
Beneath, I placed another of my incongruities. In my ongoing dialogue with nature, I wish to surprise you as I was surprised; those who know me know I often speak, always in the vocabulary of art, of a purified and almost bucolic nature. Yet, in confronting LEOLEO, this balance struggle reveals a new aspect.
Hence, I chose to recreate my fantasy in the left hemisphere, discovering, in this dreamlike journey through colors and mounds, streams flowing into water… I think of Leonardo’s studies of fluid dynamics and realize that nature has, like us, its right hemisphere—warm and instinctive—and its left hemisphere, which, following the laws of physics and mathematics, regulates the life of every living being in this world.”