Venice, the Italian water city where Chinese artists have impressed at the ongoing Biennale international art exhibition, is also home to an art academy where dozens of young Chinese students are preparing to be artists of the future.
"We have more than 100 Chinese students here, around 9 percent of the total number of students at our academy, and they are increasing every year," vice director and professor of history of contemporary art at the Academy of Art in Venice Sileno Salvagnini told Xinhua in an interview earlier this week.
"Most of them are students with very high-quality skills," Salvagnini underlined. "They come here with a strong knowledge in all fields of art, from painting and sculpture to new technologies," he noted. "Just to make an example - a pair of them are excellent at wooden sculptures," the professor said.
In order to overcome some language difficulties, Salvagnini told Xinhua, the academy is planning to organize courses of Italian to support the integration of its precious Chinese students. "I went to China with a few colleagues last year and we visited some art schools. I would like to further strengthen exchange programs with China. Chinese art is booming in Italy," he said.
In fact, with a national pavilion and several China-related artworks on display at collateral events, China is in the spotlight at the Biennale, running between May 9 and Nov. 22 in Venice.
The Venice art academy, the only state art academy in northeastern Italy, whose foundation dates back to 1750, has strong ties with the Venice Biennale, professor of phenomenology of contemporary arts Riccardo Caldura explained to Xinhua.
"Many of our students collaborate to concretely realize some of the works of other artists exhibited at the Biennale," he noted. Moreover, the academy has its own exhibition space at the two-year event.
Caldura praised the high attention paid to manual skills at art schools in China. "My impression is that China is raising young artists with excellent classical manual skills. In addition, they are very informed and cultured," he highlighted.
The professor suggested that Chinese students further improve their "sensibility towards the contemporary world."
"A technically well-done painting is not enough, as it must mirror the contemporary sensibility," he explained to Xinhua. In his view, art is not just a "sum" of technical skills. "We hope that Chinese students here at our academy of art can go beyond technical skills and also improve their sensibility," he said.
Caldura stressed that China is "one of the cultural matrices of the world" and is rooted "in a very profound past." Thus the Asian country, he went on saying, has a huge potential to pursue top-quality art production by "drawing knowledge from the past as a rich chance for creativity in the present."
"If China manages to put together the manual and handicraft skills typical of its tradition with a sensibility towards the contemporary world, results can be outstanding," the professor told Xinhua. "And in fact this is already happening," he said.
