Gabriel Diana is a Corsican painter, sculptor, and bronze worker. He initially pursued a career as an engineer before his love and passion for Art and creation took over. Classical Greek aestheticism and Etruscan aestheticism in a nod to Tuscany where it was born, with the sublime as a common thread. The demiurge that he is therefore found his characters, minimalist figures in bronze, reduced to the essential. Its driving force remains sensitivity, which we discover through the 4,000 m² of the Dian’Arte Museum in Borgo, Corsica. It is in Roanne that his works adorn the streets of the city and in an exhibition at the city’s Maison des Métiers d’art.
franceinfo: At 82 years old, we understand that the wonder is still there. What is the driving force behind creation today?
Gabriel Diana : I think an artist is a blind man held by the hand of a kid. So wonder must be everyday. And then there is constant research, work on myself.
“I continue to discover, I continue to learn with the humility necessary for those who want to grow.”
Gabriel Dianaat franceinfo
At the beginning, there is this little boy, French mother, Italian father. There comes a time when things don’t work out with the family. What do you remember from this childhood?
I wanted to become an artist. I started drawing and doodling when I was very young, at six or seven years old. And there were two things absolutely forbidden at home: it was to speak Corsican – we must speak French, we must learn French – and above all to work as an artist because they were depraved, debauched. , people died of starvation. And I ended my life speaking Corsican and working as an artist. It just goes to show that everything evolves in life.
In 1950, you are going to take academic courses, but I have the impression that there is already this love of art, this attraction to art which enters into your life.
So the attraction to art was born when I was born, that’s undeniable. Inevitably, I have always drawn. At the age of eight, my mother enrolled me in a painting academy in Bastia and there, I learned to hold brushes in hand. It lasted a year or two. Art has always followed me, has always pursued me and I couldn’t live without it. I subsequently studied engineering, I had two big companies, with one I made 18,000 windsurf boards per year, with the other, I was at the technological forefront because that creativity has never abandoned me. When you see a plastic ball for public lighting, the first in the world, it was me who developed it for the American General Electric, the first plastic tank, it was me who worked on it for the Porsche.
“I was always at the forefront.”
Gabriel Dianaat franceinfo
Creativity has always been within me. And when my important industrial friends from Lombardy invited me, “Come, we’re going to spend our weekend on my 38 meter yacht in Genoa, then in the evening we’re going to eat in a famous three-star restaurant“Me, if I could dodge, find an excuse and find myself in the basement with my artist friends, making lithographs, screen prints, with my hands in them, I was happy. To each their own vices!
You were an engineer in Lombardy, things were going very well for you, and you lost your son. It was obviously a painful moment, so much so that you actually decided to drop everything and put it at the service of art. Does that mean that it is often in pain that we create?
Yes, it was a dramatic period of my life because we only had one son. And then a stupid accident on the highway left him dead. It was really terrible. I could no longer see myself in Milan, I sold my companies, I hesitated between London and Paris. And then I said to myself as we get older, we’re going to return to Corsica, it’s calmer. We will live by going on cruises, going to see friends left and right. And then I’m incapable of doing that, so I started.
“I was going to end up shooting myself in the head and I said to myself that I was going to do this job as an artist that I have always been forbidden to do and that I have always cultivated in the shadows, in my rare moments of availability.”
Gabriel Dianaat franceinfo
Your exhibition in Roanne is accessible to everyone and is completely free. It is at least until March 2025 or even to eternal life.
It is an exhibition which lasts in theory until March, but since the opening day, the exhibition has been owned by the municipality of Roanne. I’m giving it as a gift.
We feel that this wonder, this curiosity, this desire to continue is like the first day. Have the works you have done ultimately allowed you to keep your son alive a little bit?
We never mourn what happened to us, that’s indisputable. For me, it was a trigger because, without that, I would never have pursued this profession as an artist, that’s obvious. In any case, it doesn’t make you age because if I take my 82 years, if I add the 15 I have in my head and we take the average, I’m not yet mature!
