INTRODUCTION by Maurizio Sentieri

What is the difference between a painting, a traditional cake, a pair of shoes, a piece of music and a prayer?
An enormous one, if we look at the finished product; but no difference if one thinks that they are all forms – whether material or immaterial is unimportant – of culture. Because, aren’t all the responses we give to the questions of our “humanness” all culture? Questions, answers, and culture as the only glue between them… Rather confusedly, this was more or less what I thought the first time that Guido Profumo showed me some of his paintings. There was something that caught me off guard. Guido, who up until then I had known as a friend, entrepreneur, CEO, a man of doing, of organization and action, that same Guido was responsible for those forms and those colours. And not even those paintings seemed to overlap his commitment to the public good, and his ethical vision of work; looking at them produced a feeling of uncertainty in me. What’s more, painting is perhaps second only to music and singing when it comes to expressing the “answers” to our need for beauty, for humanity, inevitably to questions regarding some form of spirituality…
But the question I grappled with in that instant was what was the link between Guido and those paintings? Where did the man who I’d known until then intersect with, at least on those canvases, his self-expression in colour and shapes, and indeed his being colour and shapes?
Meanwhile Guido, ironic and incredulous, engaged while being also amused, told me things about his paintings. I know a saying that Guido is fond of, a sort of symbolic “compass” for his professional choices, which also helps handle the inevitable “curves” in life, a maxim which he’s always shared with those close to him: “If you keep on doing what you’ve always done, you’ll get to where you’ve already been….”. The maxim of a free, restless spirit, which in itself could be the response to those paintings… yet another shift, yet another transformation, and in that sense it was probably the simplest and most truthful reason for why the paintings existed. Restless people always ask themselves a lot of questions… and not about daily life and material things. But it is precisely then, that when seeking possible answers we might stumble into things – let’s call it culture, forms of culture – which we had not hitherto expected. We stumble into them indeed, because our encounter with those “forms” makes us think, even despite ourselves. Forms of culture which are often unexpected but evidently always congenial to us as they answer those niggling questions.
So, I think Guido had simply found one of these forms, and it was one of those which he had not yet explored. There’s an adjective I think rather apt for binding Guido’s activities together; it has remote origins, apparently dating back to ancient Rome. To repair marble statues, the Romans used wax, to mask the statues’ flaws, cracks, dents. Sine cera [“without wax”], was therefore the equivalent of a product without trickery and without pretence, something authentic, just as it appeared.
Reflecting upon this, sine cera or rather “sincere” describes all I have known of Guido and his numerous undertakings. I believe that it is the perfect term for describing my friend, the entrepreneur, the CEO, the man of organization and action, the artist…