ARTIST STATEMENT
EXHIBITION HISTORY
GALLERIES
MY FAVORITES


Artist Statement -



Art, creativity and imagination have always played an important part in my life, although I have only started to fully concentrate on painting a few years ago.
This passion has always been part of me. I have finally given up my work as a general manager in industry – to dedicate all my time to painting. At last I do what I have always wanted to do. It is simply that a dream has finally come true.
Even during my years at secondary school my paintings were awarded prizes and I should have enrolled in art classes after I passed my A-levels. In fact, a renowned company manufacturing ceramics offered me a scholarship, which I was unable to accept at the time.
I have always kept up with painting as landscapes and images, abstract and impressionist. Since some years now I am able to paint full-time and fill canvas after canvas with my ideas.
My new studio is right in the centre of the village of Arcegno, surrounded by wooded hills, near to Ascona, a well-known tourist centre at the Lago Maggiore in the South of Switzerland.
I apply the paints directly to the canvas with a spatula. I usually use acrylic paints. The reason is probably because I am a pragmatist, even when I paint. My style is like my temperament – quick. Painting with a spatula and acrylic paints, which dry in less than an hour, is totally in line with my mentality. I prefer strong, vibrant colours. My work always begins with a sketch, following a very clear image of the actual result. I always prepare the entire painting down to most details in my imagination. Sometimes it takes several days before I can start working on the actual painting. But once I have started things move very quickly. I paint "wet on wet", mixing the paints on the canvas. Because I use a lot of paint, which I apply in thick slabs, the structure created where the paint has been applied, remains clearly visible. It reminds the onlooker of the Impasto technique. Many of my paintings and their subjects are transformed into geometrical shapes, a technique which divides the images into segments. Therefore, I refer to it as segment art.

So I see visions, abstract paintings, somehow expressive, exploring intense emotions on the canvas.
Some funny ideas, as the kind of Calligraphy or Graffiti, I name “picchiography”. Rather than using language to replace the visual image, I use the visual image by painting letters to words. It is a bit like pop art but very nice to paint and inspires to meditation.
As a specialty I paint collages or compositions, of products, components, applications and so on of a specific theme on commission. I made several nice large Collages for Industry and a Bank.
My latest series is (about) work, which I call “art()work”. It shows stylistic colourful clippings of the machine working process with steel.
My latest works are Wildflowers, which you find in the Swiss Alps. I had made several hundred wildflower photos, most in macro. My wildflower paintings find many compliments and enthusiasm.In my segmant-art style they are very modern, but still presenting the typical aspect of the natrural flowers.

Artist Exhibitions



From 10th November through 14th November 2005, Art exhibition in Padova, Italy

From 6th October through 15th October 2005, Personal exhibition in Galeria d'Arte la Telaccia, Turin, Italy

From 23rd August through 10th September 2005, Personal exhibition, Gallery Gora, Montreal, Canada

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Artist Publications



Ticino Management, monthly Swiss Finance, Economic and Culture Magazine, Anno XIV n. 4, Aprile 2002 S.182 + 183
"...Make Art with Money. – With the introduction of the Euro, German Marks, Liras, French Francs etc. were taken out of circulation; but they continue to live in the great Collages and Acrylic paintings of Picchio, the multitalented artist, who lives and works in our Canton…

Födermittel Journal, 2002, Logistik und Materialfluss,
34. Jahrgeng März 2002 S 14+15
"...Specht’s Atelier, made by his own designs in the center of the village Arcegno, is developing a small but fine workplace for Ideas for Corporate Culture. Managers of the material handling industry, services and other branches take advice of his creativity …His paintings are visual impression of a living corporate culture….

f+h Fördern und Heben, Zeitschrift für Materialfluss und Automation
Ausgabe 1-2 2002 S.12
"...For Specht (Picchio) develops a second career, which divides with the first one not only the creativity and dynamic but also combines the fun and success…."

Lagertechnik 2002 25.Jahrgang Dezember 2001 S. 4
"...Dieter Specht was always just both: artist and entrepreneur – and these side by side... Dieter Specht will take his second roll as personality in the conveyor industry also in future..."

Ticino Magazine, Rivista Mensile del tempo libereo,
Novembre 2001, S.11
"...other works show simple words and objects, composed in different collages and compositions. With these daily things Picchio create the “intensity of beauty” as Claus Steinrötter points out the paintings of the artist in the catalogue of the exposition…

Tessiner Zeitung,
31.Okt.2001, S. 13
"...An intensive, but humorous and composed universe of colors and light opens for the beholder. The geometric form and the division into striped segments constitute the basic stylistic inventory. The segments break the naturalistic gaze and open the viewer’s eyes to the artist’s experience underlying the image.

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Artist Collections



Numerous private, corporate, museum, gallery and government collections detailed information coming soon.

Artist Favorites



Personal Favorites