Bernardino Toppi (1933 - ) was born in Rome, Italy to a family of artists and grew up surrounded by painters, sculptors and writers. In his own words, he describes fresco as “a system of painting using colors diluted in lime water on a freshly coated surface (lime plaster). Fresco is the most perfect form of historically notable painting. History gives us no period, origin or even the person that first practiced the art of fresco painting. However, its use goes a very long way back in history : vestiges have been found in Egyptian temples.” Toppi exhibited widely from early 1960’s to present across US and Europe. His work is held in Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Musée du Petit Palais de Genève, Musée des Beaux Arts & d’Archéologie de Besançon, Musée de la Vallée du Lot de Villeneuve sur Lot -ancien Musée Gaston Rapin, Musée des Beaux Arts Albert André de Bagnols sur Cèze, Musée de la Tour Carrée de Sainte-Maxime and Mairie de Vaucresson. Of his work, Toppi says: “ I would like to arrive at more elusive and discreet art, stripped of anything superfluous, where shapes fade leaving more room for dreams. However, I am also looking for something magic and mysterious that responds to my need to be fascinated by a piece of work emanating from a spiritual atmosphere and abolishing the notion of time and space. Painting that cannot be dated, that stimulates sensitivity and intrigues the curiosity and leaves eye free to discover a multitude of different things. My universe is made up of places, dreams, memories, processions, festivals, scenes taken from life. There are men, women, horses, donkeys, dogs, landscapes… In fact there is quite simply life, but life and histories suspended in a dream-like dimension.”