A Conversation with Prof. Paola Salvi from the Accademia of Belle Arti, Milan, and the artist Michelangelo Pistoletto about the Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci, Segno Arte (Art Sign) and the Third Paradise by Michelangelo Pistoletto, followed by a video screening and a special live performance on "Great Symbol" with Michelangelo Pistoletto and some students of the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera (Marcelina Braga Dias, Alicia Comincioli, Thais Fernandes Costa, Katia D. Greco, Gabriele Rivolta, Wan Xi), in collaboration with La Scuola d'Italia Liceo students.

Renaissance and Rebirth has been represented in Milan, Florence, Venice and other locations
in Italy in 2012 and 2013 and a video screening of it was also presented with the catalogue of the exhibition Michelangelo Pistoletto. Année 1. Le Paradise sur Terre at the Louvre Museum in Paris.

Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man represents a male figure placed in both a circle and square, as specified by Vitruvius in his treatise De Architectura (On Architecture). The measurements of the body follow the rule specified by Leon Battista Alberti in his treatise De statua (On Statuary). Leonardo's Man, icon of the Renaissance is therefore a perfectly proportionate body which became the symbol of civilization in the Western world.

According to Michelangelo Pistoletto "Leonardo's Man was placed in the center of a world to be discovered. Today, the Segno Arte emanating from the mirror depicts a human being projected into the future looking at the past, like a temporal weighing scales, and directs attention toward new proportions that humanity has to consider in order to progress."

These new proportions especially regard the relationship between contemporary man and the planet he lives on. The necessity to find a new harmony between nature and technology has given rise to the great symbol that is the Third Paradise. It is a symbol that begins with the mathemathical symbol for infinity expanding toward the centre into a third and wider circle.

This represents "the procreational emblem of a new humanity" which takes responsibility for the planet.

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PROGRAM:
2:30 pm -- Anna Fiore: Welcome Remarks

2:45 pm -- Michelangelo Pistoletto and Paola Salvi: Conversation about the Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci, Segno Arte (Art Sign) and the Third Paradise by Michelangelo Pistoletto

3:45 pm -- Screening of Rebirth Day

Monday May 5th

2:30 p.m.

at La Scuola d'Italia "G. Marconi" - Auditorium Gym

406 East 67th Street, New York