‘It is possible to speak of peace and against war in many ways. In doing so though, we must never forget to use the present tense. We must never forget or suspend our rejection of violence. Painters, sculptors, artists and poets know that their works testify to the sharper and sometimes better conscience of human beings and that this conscience, even in times of war, aspires to a culture of peace. Peace is something they need just as they need air and earth, dreams and reality. This consideration became the seed for an exhibition of modem art comprising the works of artists from the countries directly invol-ved, on both sides, in the Gulf War; a symbolic encounter of painters and sculptors of the “coalition” with those of the middle-eastern region. It is a sym-bolic gesture, an emblematic event through which, in the same exhibition, on the same walls, the ‘international right of artists’ to talk to one another and to the public is significantly and explicitly re-established. Each of the participants was asked to send a typical example of his work, without being restricted to a particular theme. These then are not works on peace, but for peace. They bring to light all the hope and despair, all the sweetness and bitterness, the contradictions and satisfactions of the present human condition seen through the sharp and participating eyes of the artists; artists however whose histories and destinies are profoundly different. Here we have all the possible wealth and poverty of modern man in the face of the tremendous and violent moral tragedy represented by war as a “solution” to the many continuing forms of injustice in the world. Though belonging to different cultures and each with his own experiences and opinions, with this exhibition, the artists wished to proclaim their right and duty to reject all “reasoning” that leads to violence. They wished to underline with their talent and plastic and expressive commitment the positive capacities of human beings and peace against the negativeness and cruelty of war. What we should like visitors to do is to look and live these works for what they are; not as a series of pictures or story book illustra-tions, not as depicted captions of our everyday existence, but as facts at the sa-me time plastic and poetic, as profound and unique signs emotion and sentiment, as works of art. And, at the same time, as human gesture of hope and awareness. The exhibition includes works by the Italians, Gioxe De Micheli, Fabrizio Merisi, Giancarlo Nucci and Agostino Pisani; the Iraqi-Kurds, Fuad Ali and Azad Nankeli; the Iraqi, Fauzi Al Delmi; the Frenchman, Daniel Bec; the American, Robert Carrol; the Englishman, Rod Dudley; the Iranian, Mansoor Farahpoor; the Israeli, Baruch Kadmon and the Egyptian, Medhat Shafik.’