Valerio Pisano, the rebellious artist of Ogliastra
By Damiana Schirru
Journalist and communication consultant.
He lives between Veneto and Sardinia and loves telling stories about the places and faces of his two “beautiful worlds”.
Continue on http://www.enordest.it my new column “Itinerari” (Routes). Every Sunday I'll be happy to introduce you to voices and stories between Nordest and Sardinia, extraordinary lands where I live and work. I'll take you on cultural, tourist and business routes full of charm and creativity, which I hope will inform and thrill whoever joins me. Today with “Itinerari” we return to Sardinia, to the paradise of Ogliastra, an unspoiled territory on the central-eastern coast of the island. Here sea and mountains meet in a scenic play of rare beauty. Among the rocks of this mysterious land and the waves of a turquoise sea considered one of the most beautiful in the world – just think of the beaches of Cala Luna, Cala Mariolu and Cala Goloritzé – grew up a boy with overwhelming irony and boundless creativity, who would become one of the most eclectic and appreciated Sardinian artists. We're talking about Valerio Pisano, born 1968, rebellious, irreverent, self-taught artist, who started expressing himself through drawing since childhood. I had the pleasure of meeting him in his hometown, Lanusei. Valerio took me to discover this ancient village of Ogliastra and the wonderful Selene Forest, where several of his sculptures are exhibited. During the tour he told me a bit about his life and artistic formation, on a journey that's both geographical and existential, with neo-realist movie anecdotes and sitcom laughs. Because with Valerio Pisano it's impossible not to smile, but it's also inevitable to be amazed by his multifaceted, provocative, imaginative art. An art that tells the visceral love for his land and an inner urgency that has accompanied him since childhood: an absolute desire for freedom beyond every cage and border. Beyond every hysical and mental prison. Enjoy reading! My meeting with Valerio Pisano
I meet Valerio Pisano in the historic center of Lanusei, a delightful mountain village of 5,400 inhabitants, which climbs the southeastern slopes of the Gennargentu park. Along with Tortolì, Lanusei is the capital of the Ogliastra province and boasts stunning landscapes that can be admired also through the beautiful "slow" routes of the Sardinian Green Train, an experience I highly recommend.
Valerio Pisano is happy to show me his city. We start the tour from Piazza Vittorio Emanuele, the heart of the historic center where the Cathedral of Santa Maria Maddalena stands.
I enjoy the charm of small squares and alleys with my nose up, because I love the wrought-iron balconies of the elegant neoclassical buildings from the late 1800s and early 1900s.
A lively, wandering interview ensues, punctuated by Valerio Pisano's witty remarks and a dive into his art.
Some call him “Mr. Bic”, for his “obsession” with the ballpoint pen invented in 1914 by the French entrepreneur Marcel Bich, loved by millions of people around the world. Others consider him the founder of the so-called “Archaic Pop Art”, which uses Bic pens as the main tool to create works, drawings and sculptures – like his famous bronze and bronzetti – that rework ancient symbols of Nuragic Sardinia.
His countercurrent art has also been recognized internationally. A delegation from Bic Create in Paris came to Lanusei to pay tribute to his creativity and his declaration of love for the mythical ballpoint pen, drawn infinite times with countless quantities of Bics!
Before getting into the details of his artistic path, I ask Valerio Pisano to tell me a bit about his childhood in Lanusei.
He does it with the irony that distinguishes him and with nostalgic brushstrokes, this time as an Impressionist painter. Pisano describes a small ancient world that today is unimaginable. A microcosm where lively, but never mean, kids move around, healthy carriers of an innocence that perhaps no longer exists today.
He answers like this, and I seem to be watching scenes from a neo-realist movie signed by Vittorio De Sica.
Valerio Pisano tells about himself
“Valerio Pisano. Ingredients: Lanusei, year 1968. Working parents, worried about the arrival of the fifth and last child, after three sisters and a brother. In Lanusei, that year, precisely in December, about 350 births were recorded. I had plenty of potential playmates, but also potential enemies (laughs). You had to be on guard! It was a time when you played in the streets. Those who were lucky enough to have a TV had it in black and white and without a remote control. You could only watch two channels. Phones had a lock. Ours did too, after I tried several times to dial random numbers, but with real prefixes, seen in Mike Bongiorno's ads. Prefixes from all over the world. I went for the US ones. I had been attracted to America and the American dream since I was a kid, but now I've waked up (the artist specifies with a laugh). Sometimes recorded voices answered. Other times, real people. But at that age, not knowing languages, I'd listen to the other person and then hang up.”
I lived in a central neighborhood of Lanusei, but my curiosity and that of my accomplices went beyond... We'd leave the village through dirt roads, cutting through vegetable gardens, where we'd eat whatever we could find. Carrots, fennel, tomatoes and especially the white root of a plant with a funny name: Cacciumbulu. It was everywhere. Once the owner caught us and we ran away jumping over terraces more than 2 meters high! We jumped like antelopes, without any fear and without any effort.
We'd go into construction sites, where we could admire the houses and buildings under construction, our absolute passion. It wasn't a passion reserved only for retirees (laughs). We were competent too. With my dear friend Robertino, we took turns acting as 'Lucignolo', like real naughty kids! The dangerous ideas came partly to me and partly to him. One thing was certain. We were in Toyland. Weren't there any carousels and swings? No problem! We created the games ourselves.
We'd come home always dirty, with torn clothes from crawling through bushes or barbed wire fences, or from some scuffle between boys. We'd eat eggs straight from the hen, still warm. We only went to the chicken coops for snacks. The smell wasn't exactly appetizing, but to eat those super fresh eggs, you could put up with the stink and a bit of dysentery (laughs).
For a short time I even served as an altar boy, but my rebellious character couldn't stand all that composed seriousness. So I'd get kicked out of the altar with tiny, imperceptible "priestly" gestures, to avoid a scandal. I was always clashing with commandments! Especially, I was convinced that the so-called 'impure' acts weren't impure at all (bursts into a hearty laugh). I laughed a lot. Everything could be a source of laughter and hilarity."
Coming back to your artistic inspiration, where does the obsession with the Bic pen come from?
“From a very strong need for escape that has been part of me since I was a child. I felt trapped in a school system that I found boring and oppressive. At school I was distracted. I didn't like it. I was confined to the last desk for all 5 years of elementary school. I took refuge in a world of fantasy and imagination. It was during that period that I committed to history – if there will be history (laughs) – what was going through my head, because I wrote down my thoughts. I messed up the only two schoolbooks with the Bic pen. I didn't always draw things relevant to the story printed in the books. Very often I'd digress with war scenes, ships, sharks, spaceships. It was the only way I had to escape from that world I hated.
During a move in 2011, I found some elementary school books, school years 1977-78, where there was also a drawing album. Inside, two Bic pens were drawn. A leap into the past that shook me and brought tears. Beautiful tears.”
After elementary school, did you continue studying…
[19:15, 26/04/2026] Valerio: così? – rispose mamma in tono furente – Ha appena telefonato Don Ort…
[19:15, 26/04/2026] Meta AI: “Reluctantly, I attended middle school at the Salesian Institute of Lanusei, where the Salesians built their first house in Sardinia on June 14, 1902. I remained uninterested in everything related to school, while continuing to adore Bic pens. At the Institute my behavior wasn't great. I was restless and paid for my actions with slaps and punishments, because 'you shouldn't play soccer or billiards!', the teachers would tell me.
One day I came home with a pair of wooden stilts. Tools I'd taken from the oratory. My mom asked me: 'Whose are these stilts?' I replied that Don Ortu had given them to me! 'Is that so? – mom replied in a furious tone – Don Ortu just called and said to bring the stilts back to the Oratory right away!' I remained a rebel.
During that year and a half at boarding school I learned to paint with oil colors. But the slaps were becoming too much. I ran away from school, ending up losing a school year and resuming the next year at a state school. My attendance at school ended at the Classical High School in V ginnasio. A high school I'd enrolled in not because I was interested in the subjects, but because my 'disturbing' mission of my preferred desk mate would've been interrupted if I'd done the vocational school, suggested by my middle school teachers.”
So your ironic and "rebellious" art is born as a reaction to a discomfort you experienced at school?
“Surely my frustrated need for freedom – as a child, but also as an adult – was the trigger that made me rebel against a system I detested and from which I wanted to escape. Not being able to do it physically, I did it by taking refuge in creativity. From when I attended school to when I worked, both in Lanusei and in various regions of Italy – Lombardy, Tuscany, Lazio – my creative outlet has always been creativity. Drawing was my logbook when I was a teenager. I'd pour all my discomforts onto paper.
At school, the Bics were my accomplices, adventure companions with which I started drawing a world that finally pleased me. Over time, the Bic pen became a 'fetish' of my artistic path even when – ironically – I found myself moving from the school imprisonment of childhood to working as a police officer at the Sassari prison, and later at the Buoncammino prison in Cagliari. Other contexts in which I felt caged and from which I dreamed of escaping.”
Valerio, was there a "lightbulb" moment for your artistic path?
“Yeah. It happened in 2009. I was working at the San Sebastiano prison in Sassari, one of the 13 institutions where I've worked. I'd doodled a red Bic pen on a sheet, drawn with a red Bic. A doctor from the hospital ward there tried to grab it, thinking it was real. He realized after a few attempts that the pen was drawn. 'But... is it a drawing?' His surprise opened a world for me. I'd found a creative path all my own, and I haven't stopped since.
From that moment I started drawing pens with pens. Self-portraits of the Bic pen. Hundreds. In every style. Dressed in any outfit: wedding dresses, uniforms, bronzes, Sardinian and other countries' folk costumes, soccer players, playing cards, animated pens, running, working, making love with the Kamasutra, caps. Hundreds of caps, a sea of drawings. Pens appearing in ancient paintings, in hieroglyphs.
Then I grew, I changed. I explored other techniques drawing other subjects. Always hunting for something unique, original. A search that lasted decades. In a wheat field I created an 80-meter-long cap in 2024. From the flour from that wheat I created the 'Bicstoccu', small Bic pen caps with the 'pistoccu' bread dough: the hexagonal pen-shaped pasta, edible caps in flour or with sugar, the wallpaper with caps, clothing and finally the 'Archaic Pop Art'.
The same pen drawings I'm reproducing in bronze with the old Nuragic lost-wax technique.”
Let's take a step back. After leaving ginnasio, what happened?
“I was 16. I started doing various odd jobs. First in a dairy, then as a laborer, until my mom made me do a typing course. I was good and super fast. I liked it. That course allowed me to work for a lawyer and a notary and buy a car. I'd always dreamed of traveling. It was the perfect escape. I started traveling around Ogliastra and discovering how beautiful our territory is. The beaches, mountains, watercourses, waterfalls and lakes. Incredible landscapes. A paradise.
I appreciated the value of my land even more later, when I started traveling for work and pleasure. I was able to make comparisons and, from what I've seen, I appreciated even more the place where I was born. This Ogliastra, in addition to all the other ingredients, is an essential element to create Valerio Pisano.
When you look out from Lanusei, eastward towards the sea, you have a natural theater of rare beauty, where blue reigns, anticipated by a green valley. You can understand, even before going to the sea, with a 15-20 minute descent, which beach to go to. Which one will be the most exposed to the wind and which one the most sheltered.
If you prefer to head up to the mountains, there's the wonderful Selene Park. Here you can also visit the Nur Archeopark, an educational path open to all, immersed in a beautiful holm oak forest that hosts a refreshment point, a panoramic point over the entire valley and especially an Archaeological Park with beautiful Giant Tombs dating back to the Bronze Age.”
On the road with Valerio Pisano
I can't resist the temptation to admire this magical place with my own eyes. Valerio Pisano leads me through the Archaeological Park like a true guide, on an incredible journey through vestiges of pre-Nuragic and Nuragic civilizations and works of contemporary art, including his giant 5-meter-tall bronze (in front of which I treat myself to a lovely photo with the artist!), which depicts the tribal chief of Nuragic iconography, but with a "little" distinguishing feature: the cap of a Bic pen! This is the work that launched his latest artistic movement, the so-called "Archaic Pop Art."
Before this most recent phase, are there any other important milestones worth mentioning?
“Between 2006 and 2009 I pulled out 23 works from over 200 drawings done in various materials: wood, plexiglass, steel. Another strand was born, 'Profumo di Ringhiera', promoted by the Rossolevante Association. A project that – after the presentation by Roberto Gramiccia, doctor, writer and art critic – took me to Rome to exhibit alongside artists of the caliber of Jannis Kounellis.
In 2009 and 2010 – along with creating dressed and animated pens – I started designing with a program prototypes of various objects, stationery, furnishings, all on the Bic theme.
From 2024 – thanks to Francesco Piccitto and his remarkable design skills – I'm having these creations physically reproduced with a 3D printer, which I'm showing on my social channels, and which are getting a great success. The lamps, the lipstick, the torch and many other design objects that I've just pulled out of the drawer. Among these, the snap-on cap, a knife shaped like a cap built on my design by the great craftsman Marco Manias.”
The dreams in Valerio Pisano's drawer?
“For a moment I counted the drawers I have at home. This is to show how, even with a simple question, I tend to go off topic, I digress! (laughs). After all, the teacher wrote it well in my V elementary report card: “the student lives ‘day by day’, forgetting tomorrow what he learned the day before…”. That's it. I'm still like that!
It seems to me that I spend a good part of every day doing what I like. This probably distracts me and doesn't give me 'dream in the drawer' anxiety. So it's a question I'm having trouble answering. I think they're simple things, maybe boring. First of all, I'd like a house with two fewer flights of stairs and a small adjacent vegetable garden. Living well with people I love, staying healthy, growing and improving as a person, having a few more artistic satisfactions. Not the impossible, human levels. Always being able to say 'No', without offending anyone. Always having the possibility to travel, know, snoop around. Laughing to tears, as often happens to me.
Finally – Pisano concludes with pragmatic irony – I’d like the work on the new S.S. 125 to finish and for them to complete that interrupted stretch near Tertenia.”
