Art wants to stir our emotions and our thoughts, to provoke in us a reaction. It wants to offer new points of view and suggest original ways to interpret what’s around us. One can condemn or can dream of a whole new world.

One can paint a Guernica against the violence of war, just like Picasso did, or go for magical art like the Surrealists, who found refuge in imaginary worlds because rationality and logic only led to the horrors of World War Two. You can even give up the dream of a lifetime, just like Jacopo Tissi – pride and joy of Italian ballet – did, by giving up his place as the principal dancer at the Bolshoi in Moscow, because “no war can ever be justified.”