For our search for the business hero, this time we interviewed Marco Veronese, a world-renowned Italian artist who has been working in Hungary for years. We tackled the themes of Ethics, Sustainability, focusing more on the theme of Creativity, the foundation of Veronese’s life.
We also interviewed Gabor Nemes, co-founder and CEO of Good People Everywhere, Michele Orzan, President of EuCham, Gabor Marton, a Peak-performance coach who works in the field of finance and entrepreneurship, Alessandro Farina, founder of ITL Group, Omar Balducci, Manager of Lucart Kft, Luigino Bottega, coach and author of “IO – how to win the game of life” and Giacomo Pedranzini, CEO of Kometa 99 and winner of the 2023 Atlas Award.”
Please introduce yourself
My name is Marco Veronese. I am an Italian phygital artist living in Budapest for 7 years now. Being a phygital artist means using technological tools to create physical works of art.
I also create installations; I am a co-founder of Cracking Art, a group that was born in Italy exactly 30 years ago. The installations consist of animals made from recyclable plastic to raise awareness about how to use plastic to safeguard the planet. It might seem like a contradiction because plastic is perceived as dangerous, but it’s not dangerous in itself; it’s dangerous because we use it in the wrong way. We aim to teach people how to be aware of the tools we have and use them better.
Let’s start with an easy word association game. What comes to mind when I say ‘business’? And what comes to mind when I say ‘hero’?
I am not a businessman because I am an artist, so I can’t say I think of art as a business. However, I hope to be a hero.
You can study a lot, but you can also become an artist without studying. For me, being an artist has to do with our soul; it’s a way for a human being to express themselves.
Indeed, just think that it’s something that originated in caves, therefore, an experience of prehistoric human beings, who obviously were not graduates from an art school.
Naturally, at that time, art meant initiating a new language, a language through symbols because a symbol contains all possible information.
If I were to draw an elephant now and show it to a child in Australia or an adult in China, both would recognize an elephant. But saying ‘elephant’ to someone who doesn’t understand the language would be just an incomprehensible word.
Humans began to communicate in a non-verbal language that is deeper and stronger like music, and it doesn’t matter if you know the music or not, when you feel something, you feel it in your stomach, you feel it in your soul: that’s why art for me is not a business.
I live for art, and I live through the sale of my artworks. But the level of creation when it comes to art is different.
Communicating something that is important not only to the artist but also to others, to the observer themselves.
The artist is just a tool, and we are like an antenna: we must transform the vibrations, the energy, and the sensations that come from the universe and turn them into something that is also recognizable to others, to the viewers…
And what is a hero? It’s someone who can change another’s life. It’s easy to work for ourselves, to improve ourselves, but it’s very important the moment when you realize that what you are doing for yourself is not enough. Because we are not here just to go from point A to point B, from birth to death, but we are here to give meaning to our individual lives, to find a way to help people and to help humanity.
It doesn’t matter if we help a small group of people around the world, but it’s important to understand that we must start this process one step at a time.
Now, let’s combine the two words… what do you think a business hero is?
A Business hero is someone who has the fortune of combining their activity with something that can be useful not only for themselves but also for the community, which can be made up of a single person or the entire humanity.
So, from the combination of these two words (which seem very different), if you manage to put them together, you can create a bomb of love.
Every hero faces a journey, when did you feel your calling and how did your journey begin?
My journey began when I was a child, unconsciously.
I understood all my path a few years ago, almost 10 years ago, because I started to connect the point of my life with the story of other people I met on my journey through life.
The real beginning was when I was ten years old, when once for my birthday, a family friend gave me a book titled “From the Renaissance to Mannerism” and I began to be fascinated by the sculpture, the painting of the great masters of the past and began to understand and also to try to copy their works, -it was impossible of course-.
Years, decades later I understood that that book gave me the opportunity to discover what I wanted, what was already in myself, hidden in the inner part of myself, of my consciousness.
The way to transform ideas and feelings into something that can be visible to others: this is how I combine my heroic side with something that brings me joy.
But this is a need of others too, so this was the starting point. In the end, art was already in my soul.
An artist at school can learn to draw, to sculpt, to talk about history but if they don’t have the soul, the fire, they can’t be an artist. I had the fire unconsciously, I never decided to become an artist. Maybe it was chosen by the universe.”
What obstacles have you encountered on your journey?
All of them. Every kind of obstacle.
You know, it was very difficult to decide to start this journey as an artist because I didn’t have the basics, I had never studied art in my life.
I started as a photographer and left school at eighteen before graduating, -so imagine how happy my family was-. But this was my fire, my dream.
I wanted to follow my dream because if we don’t try to turn our dreams into something real, why are we here? Why are we living? What is the purpose of life? What is it if not to bring our dreams into reality?
So yes, coming back to the question, the obstacles are many, because you first have to understand what you really need and what you really want to show to others, then you have to be accepted by others, so you have to enter the system, the art system. This is very difficult because you are selling yourself; you know that what you are doing is part of your soul, your human experience, and you have to sell it to talk about it even to people who don’t care about your aesthetics, your harmony, your messages, or anything else.
So the artist’s way of living is very strong and difficult, that’s why many artists in their lives have committed suicide, have become homeless… but they didn’t worry about it, because being an artist is not doing a job, it’s not doing business, it’s something else.
Have you found a mentor or an inspiring leader who has helped you move forward?
Yes, many. When I think about it, I consider myself very lucky because looking back at my life and connecting all the dots, I had many mentors, one of whom is even in front of me now (Luigino Bottega). There have also been people who, unknowingly, gave me the opportunity to believe in my dreams and to overcome obstacles, problems, and moments of sadness in my life, and they gave me hope to be what I am now.
So we are all just the sum of individual experiences and of all the people we have met in our life, for better or for worse.
So we just have to think that life is a great opportunity, it’s the opportunity for the soul to understand other souls, to meet other souls and together create a better place to live.
It’s a seemingly banal and naive phrase, but it’s reality.
We are just a part of the mosaic, without a piece the mosaic is not complete. But if we are together and help each other, we create the mosaic of consciousness. Everything can be completely different. When talking about a hero, one thinks of a human being who has changed the world, but those men, those men in the past did not know they were a “hero”. We can name some: Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, they were just following their dreams, following their feelings, their soul, so everyone can be heroes.
Maybe we don’t know it now, but now we can do something that will be important for the future, like the butterfly effect: a butterfly’s wing beat in the Amazon can create a tornado in Texas.
Absolutely yes, and what I am doing now maybe in a decade or a century will create something else, so it is very important. All of us can be heroes, just think differently and believe in it.
What important lessons have you learned and what is your contribution to society?
The most important lesson I learned was at the age of 50, and now I am 61.
When I lived in Italy (with a nice apartment, car, motorcycle, a beautiful love story), something happened to me and I fell in love with a Turkish girl, so I decided to move to Turkey, but I couldn’t bring my apartment, my car, my motorcycle, or anything else with me, it was impossible. I had a very small van at that time: 2 cubic meters of space, and you can imagine, there was no room for anything.
So at that moment, I understood what was truly important for my life, and what was important only took up the space of that small van.
At that moment, it was a big change because I realized that everything we have in our life, what we buy, gives us temporary happiness, it’s just another link in the chain -which can also be gold, which can also be very long-, but if you decide to run there will be a moment when the chain will stop you…
So, the more we are inclined to depend on the objects we buy, that surround us, the more we are slaves.
So I realized that freedom is priceless.
When you are able to open a suitcase, put your minimal things in order, and go somewhere else, this is the most important thing we can do as human beings, and not just in materialistic terms, but also mentally, when we manage to clean our brain from the many superstructures we create: from those of society, family, school, or whatever. In this way, we can give freedom to our dreams and our thoughts.
We must clean our soul, we must clean the inner part of ourselves. This is the only way to understand what we are, what we are doing here, and what our purpose in life is
Atlas World is looking for business heroes with an ethical, sustainable, and creative approach: Do you have someone in mind who embodies these qualities?
I am in this office and therefore I think that there is not just one person who can be the hero of Atlas World.
This project was born here, in ITL Group, the company led by Alessandro Farina and his collaborators like Luigino and like you, Irene.
This is the place where the hero begins to spread their dreams. The ideas were born here because these people who work here have this mindset; they know that it is very important to create an important moment of sharing consciousness to share those three key words that are very very important: Ethics, Sustainability, and Creativity. The world can be changed by individuals, starting from this table, from this office, from these people.
Do you consider yourself a business hero?
I do my best. I do my best because that’s why I am here, in this body, at this moment.
Only through my heart, to give a message to people so that they try to awaken their consciousness, because first of all I awaken myself and since I am just an instrument of the universe for the universe, I must try to awaken others.”
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