Mr Wany
He began his artistic career with graffiti at the age of 12. He was soon known as Mr. Wany, the stage name used to sign the walls of his city. He graduated from the “Edgardo Simone” Art School of Brindisi and later specialized with honors at the “International School of Comics” in Rome. In 2000 he moved to Bologna where he was hired as Art Director by Dynit, one of the most important Japanese anime and manga publishing houses.
Over the years he has worked as an illustrator, graphic designer, art director, screen printer, self-produced publishing, b-boy and rarely dedicates himself to tattoo. Since 2006 he has been working full time as a contemporary artist founding his studio ‘’the Amazing Art’’ at Opera, Milan. For thirty years he touched all the phases related to the study of lettering and more.
Today he is one of the reference points of Hip Hop culture and Italian style writing in the world. He organizes one of the longest-running Hip Hop culture events of the peninsula: “Amazing Day”; publishing a book in 2020 while preparing for its fifteenth edition in 2021.
Over the years he has also created art works and projects for towns and brands. He was also invited to exhibit in numerous international group exhibitions in galleries and museums.His personal exhibitions are always original and highly successful such as: “One of them”, “Ephemeral Beauty”, “Semiotic of Bboyng” or the recent solo exhibition “Interiora”.
I started in Brindisi, when I was 12. When I started there was already a graffiti scene, from 1983. I break into this scene trying to get noticed first in my hood, then in my city, in my region, in my country, in Europe, and finally in the whole fuckin world!
Our afternoons were like this: cardboard on the floor in front of the bar, in the evening we used to drink something and to make freestyle battles and during the night we used to paint...
It’s important to have done some very beautiful things but it is also important to have done so many. Now, with internet, this thing has been lost a bit because everyone can publish a piece and the whole world can see it. Before, to get noticed, it was important to bomb in every city of the world, to tag in every neighborhood to get the crew well known.
When I started painting my points of reference were Swet, Dare, Can2... and now if I think that they are among my best friends it makes me smile and also very pleased.
The first Amazing Day was a hangout of 20 friends, celebrating my birthday and Blef’s one, together. Over time, the event has grown and lot of people from abroad started coming and the event became international. Since 2006 it had 14 editions and it’s in fact the longest-running event in Italy, and maybe even in Europe, about the Hip Hop Culture and not only about Graffiti...
I've been working in the visual arts world for almost 30 years, from illustration to tattoos, from lettering to style writing, but also street art, as for a while I used to paint mattresses and left them in the streets, before that all this thing was named “street art”, before Banksy, and before that became all the trash that is today...
I came to the conclusion that the word "street art" is the word that the art world now uses to sell this type of thing, regardless of whether it is writing or muralism...
Sometimes even destroying everything is part of making art, because in any case art for me is a relief, a valve; something that the human being must do to feel good. And therefore something that comes out of the edge, if it were always in a frame it would no longer have this power that this movement has.
During the Amazing Day I make available not only my ideas, but also my network, because I bring people painting together, alongside because in my opinion they have something in common... and this give birth to those alchemies that make you breathe, a genuine, powerful, beautiful climate, as in the 90’s!
