The Sino-Italian Calligraphy and Fine Arts Seminar was held at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts (GAFA) on October 20.

Convened by Pietro De Laurentis, an Italian sinologist and professor of GAFA, the seminar invited famous scholars from China, Italy and the United Kingdom to conduct an in-depth dialogue around the theme of "Italian and Chinese art languages".

The event is also one of the academic activities to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the founding of GAFA.

Giorgio Daviddi, Deputy Consul General of Italy in Guangzhou, addressed the seminar. He considers the cooperation with GAFA this year to be the cornerstone of the consulate's future development, and it plays a vital role in cultural exchanges between the two nations in South China.

Xie Changjing, Secretary General of the CPC GAFA Committee, proposed that the symposium aims to promote mutual learning between Chinese and Western civilizations in the new era. He stressed that we should safeguard the diversity of civilizations of all countries and ethnic groups and strengthen exchanges.

Soon afterwards, experts from different countries, including Pietro De Laurentis, Lara Broecke, a British expert in Western art history, and Veronica Ricotta, an Italian expert in Italian language history, gave keynote speeches successively. They discussed the issues related to art language communication from the perspectives of artistic language comparison and literature translation, Chinese calligraphy appreciation, art terminology and art criticism.

Pietro De Laurentis particularly emphasized the importance of artistic literature for research. By comparing the terms of Chinese and Italian art and calligraphy literature, he explored the commonality and uniqueness of human art creation and criticism.

Photo: Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts