Appearing to have stepped out of the phantasmagorical realms of Don Quixote, the artist Stefano De Santis, just like Cervantes’ notorious hero, travels the world in the company of his creations, showing last November at the Galleria Tibaldi in Trastevere, Rome.

Entering the gallery, you started to feel distanced from the chatter and noise, and you sensed the urgency of the artworks to reveal their hidden mysteries to anyone seeking an intimate connection with them, an elective affinity. And then, one by one, they began to suggest a viaticum, one undertaken by the artist himself. The starting point for this journey was the pictorial work Perspectives.

Perspectives, oil on canvas, 2023)

Here the artist paints himself, drawn from above, so that the upper part of the canvas offers the most vulnerable part of the head, its crown, in the foreground. Yet it is not the neurocranium which is offered to the viewer, but rather the central nervous system, the encephalus. This is the home of thought and emotion, and so it is considered the most sacred point, one perennially connected with the energies of the external world and with the heavens – so much so that in biblical times people covered it with veils to avoid contamination from negative energies. De Santis draws the outline with pieces of rough wood, so that the colours are scratched with intersecting and superimposed marks going in every direction, producing something akin to the ragged fabric of an old tattered dress. We cannot see his face, nor do we need to. The head is bowed downward, leading us to assume that his eyes are fixed on his feet, rigorously naked and planted on the ground, becoming a symbol not only of his connection to the earth, but also of movement: perhaps a prelude to the next figures which the artist named Pachyderms with no Memory, and with good reason.

Pachyderms with no Memory, (terracotta, 2021)

Slow-moving terracotta sculptures, whose human figures, riding headless equines, are ethereal and elongated in a quiet effort to defy gravity and reach the heavens. They might evoke the figures of Modigliani and Giacometti, or perhaps Picasso’s Don Quixote, who is also searching for the Absolute. A search that, in our neo-Don Quixote, becomes, for him too, obsessive.

The artist’s hands are immersed in terracotta, manipulating it, until they disappear, moving first into the hands of each pachyderm, then becoming part of its substance, or rather, a part of the Absolute. The possibility of discovering the gender of the figures has also disappeared, notwithstanding their nudity; they are sacred figures, lightened and ascending. The artist doesn’t spare even the figures’ eyes: closed, undefined, they have already contributed to the vision, and now lose their utility, giving space to that benevolent intruder, the third eye, so that the sinuous and sensual interior dances may begin and the process of liberation initiated.

From this point on, matter has no choice and is ready to embrace its tormented alchemical metamorphosis, reminiscent of Michelangelo. This is the moment when the body (the matter-ego) allows itself to be shaped and freed from the superfluous – that which weighs it down and no longer has a purpose – to let the Spirit direct the headless equine. And the Spirit is wind, and the wind goes where it wills. Even the equine has lost its eyes and even its head. In their place is emptiness. And the voids and solids, in De Santis’s sculptures, play an alternating role in this search for the Absolute.

Guardian from above (patinated terracotta, 2025)

Meanwhile, led by the memoryless pachyderms, we reach the Guardian from Above, where the figure is seen stretching its arms upward, toward the immensity. The hands mysteriously reappear at the top, their palms curving downward, guarding whatever is in contact with the earth or in its womb. The feet, symbolizing movement, seem to have been swallowed up, this time by Mother Earth; they are putting down sacred roots. For the Earth is Mother and takes back her children whenever she desires. And in the face of this desire, no one can escape.

Kyklos (oil on canvas, 2023)

Looking at this slender, mystical sculpture, it appears to be Kyklos, from the Greek word for circle: a human figure painted on canvas, now seen in silhouette, if not a simple circle. It has nothing left: no eyes, no mouth, no nose, no ears. It is merely a silhouette that recalls the circle: that of death and rebirth, a prelude to the next sculpture, where a saddle appears without its rider.

Pachiderm with no memory (series) (patinated terracotta, 2023)

Don Quixote has fallen from his horse, and on contact with the ground (as we imagine) he is rendered invisible and experiences an alchemical transformation. From here on the figures certainly reappear, but their bodies will now be in bronze and their feet definitively amalgamated with matter; the heads, their gazes and noses pointing upwards as they too become lost in the universe. One thing is certain: they will once again feel like dust in the Great Perfection.

Suspended between Heaven and Earth (detail, bronze – casting, 2025)

The final bronze sculpture, Suspended between Heaven and Earth, a bronze casting dated 2025, is animated by birds flying around it.

Suspended between Heaven and Earth (detail, bronze – casting, 2025)

A little bird enters the space created by the artist in the upper part of the back, as as though rapt, is about to reach the internal part, the pulsating centre of every human being, capable of beating unrestrained at the call of unconditional love; the heart. The bird is not required to understand, nor to see in order to reach it: it is enough to feel in unison with this precious and uncontrollable organ even before reaching it. Here, the artist’s viaticum reveals his mission while De Santis-Don Quixote is already imbued with the essence of life.

This is an essence that can be savoured in his Japanese gardens, where Yin and Yang have found the way to overcome irreversible conflicts and rediscovered the embrace of balance within themselves and with the entire universe. Yes, because the artist Stefano De Santis is also a gardener, and as I write in my text Anima Persa Anima Ritrovata: periegesi intorno ai giardini vaticani (Palombi Editori, Rome 2017): “…God brings man into his garden, forcing him to confront the loss of the self, because loss is not a lack, an absence, but is instead an indispensable stage in its continuation: we lose ourselves in order to find ourselves and, once again, originate.” (pp. 24-25).

 

Stefano De Santis was born in Rome’s Garbatella district on May 28, 1961. He began his self-taught artistic career in 1977, and in 1982 met De Angelis, who introduced him to the world of sculpture.

He exhibits his work in many galleries throughout Italy and takes part in exhibitions such as the ‘Festival dei Due Mondi’ in Spoleto, the Quadriennale in Rome, Work in Progress in via Margutta, Rome and at the Palazzo Piccolomini in Pienza.

In 1997 Alberto Lescay of the Fundacion Caguayo invited him to take part in a series of exhibitions and masterclasses at his workshop in Santiago de Cuba. From this time, he began working together with Cuban artists such as Alexander Lobaina Jimenez, thanks to whom colography, a graphic printing technique. Also in Cuba, he held a solo exhibition entitled Ochosi at the Modern Art Gallery in Santiago. In Havana, he met Nelson Dominguez and many other Cuban artists whose studios he frequented. He exhibited works in various “Cultural Houses” in Havana, Alamar, Villa Clara, and Caibarien, and at the Book Museum, Palacio Secundo Cabo, and in Old Havana in December 1997. In 1998, he held a solo exhibition of unique Central and South American glass works at the Municipal Museum, followed by an exhibition in Santa Clara in October of the same year.

On his return to Italy in 2008, he came into contact with the creative world of Corviali in Rome and began to work with the Communità X. In 2020 he joined C. Chierici, G. Ceraldi and G. Savino in Virus, a group originally founded in Naples in 1984 and re-formed in Rome in 2020. He has also exhibited in L’Aquila, at the Pinacoteca D’Arte Sacra di Sant’Elia, which houses a bass-relief in satin-finished bronze; in 2020-21 at the Galleria Antonio Neiwiller in Rome; in 2022-23 at the Drugstore Museum in Rome, at the archaeology and public works exhibition “Napoli New York Corviale” organized by the Special Superintendency of Rome; in 2023-24 at the BACC gallery in via Panisperna Rome-Studio Tibaldi, with an exhibition titled Corporeus; and in 2024-25 at the Oxford Hotel, in the Oxford group exhibition titled Kontemporanea Art On Time –Tutto è Arte.

Stefano De Santis currently lives and works in Rome.

 

The exhibition: Lo sguardo e la materia was on at the Galleria Tibaldi Arte Contemporanea, in via Panfilo Castaldi 18, last November 2025.