Talking Canvases

In his introductory text, Franco Purini highlights that Nino Saggio, by profession, teaches architecture at Sapienza University of Rome. He is a generous and experimental professor who shares, each time, the journey of his students, who gradually become architects, without making them dependent on him, but encouraging them to discover their reflective and creative abilities. According to Purini, Saggio, the professor, observes, studies, and transmits to his students the past, present, and future, as if they were "magical presences." He is an explorer of the new, but he is also a careful conserver of the sacred in what has been. Just like in the Temple of Vesta, a hollow tower pierced by the wind, which signals the appearance of beauty in the Sicilian pictorial environment that had always awaited it.

Because Nino Saggio has always been, and perhaps above all, a painter, and Franco Purini reveals in this book this hidden activity of Nino Saggio.

The series "I Viaggi" reaches its fifth stage with a volume dedicated to an architect renowned worldwide for his theoretical approach to design and the widespread acclaim for his graphic work. The book focuses on the painting endeavors of an architect who has been painting since 1969, yet has kept his work as a painter reserved for a select circle of friends. The subject is Antonino Saggio, who in this book uses the name by which all his friends have always called him: Nino.

Franco Purini is one of Italy's most internationally renowned architects, known for his rare ability to combine drawing, writing, and design with exceptional intensity. Together with Laura Thermes, he has created significant religious, urban, and residential works, authored theoretical books, and organized and curated architectural exhibitions worldwide. A professor at three universities in Italy and many others abroad, he has been a member of the Accademia di San Luca for over thirty years.