From: Corporate Art – Embracing a New Mindset in Marketing and Sales Strategies (2024)

Art has always been more than an aesthetic expression; it has been a communicative act. Across centuries and cultures, artistic production has functioned as a language—symbolic, emotional, conceptual—capable of bridging worlds that often remain separate: the existential and the pragmatic, the spiritual and the material, the intimate and the collective. Yet never as today has the ability to communicate art become as central, strategic, and transformative as in our contemporary landscape. The fusion of globalized markets, ubiquitous digital media, and new models of cultural consumption has turned communication into the very medium through which art exists, circulates, and finds meaning.

In Corporate Art – Embracing a New Mindset in Marketing and Sales Strategies, I argue that the act of communicating art cannot be reduced to promotion, publicity, or branding. Rather, art communication emerges as a philosophical responsibility, an act of engagement, and a catalyst for relationships among individuals, communities, and organizations. As I affirm in the book, “Art unites worlds and is a balm for the soul.”.

To communicate art is therefore to unite worlds.

Art as Engagement: Beyond Aesthetic Consumption

The genesis of my artistic journey, as recounted in the Preface by John David Mooney, reveals the interplay between creation and communication not as parallel domains, but as two sides of a single act. Mooney recalls our first encounter in 1993:

“All this energy and art created an epiphany for Arvedo… From his very first works to the paintings included in this book, there is a freshness and innocence which makes the work inviting and pleasant.”

In that Chicago studio, surrounded by apprentices, ideas, and unfinished sculptures, communication was not an afterthought. It was embedded in the process of making. The artwork did not end on the canvas; it extended into conversations, collaborations, and the exchange of visions.

Mooney adds:

“Arvedo has adopted the philosophical approach of the Mooney Studio: that it is the artist’s responsibility to discover the voids and then attempt to fill them with beauty for the common good.”

This ethical dimension is the foundation of art communication:
to fill the void between people with beauty that speaks.

Communicating Art Means Communicating Process

One of the central insights of the book is that art should not be secluded behind the walls of galleries or constrained within market logic. Instead, it should mirror the process of engagement, making creation itself visible and shareable. As Mooney highlights, the enjoyment and energy present in my works reflect an openness that is communicative before it is commercial.

To communicate art is therefore to render visible the invisible labor behind a painting or sculpture—the gestures, hesitations, intuitions, and transformations that constitute the artistic act.

This transparency allows organizations, communities, and audiences to access the humanity behind the object. In this sense, communication deepens the aesthetic experience rather than diluting it.

The Corporate Dimension: When Art Communicates Organizations

The concept of Corporate Art emerges from this intersection of artistic practice and communicative mission. Traditionally, categories such as Religious Art, Landscape Art, or Mural Art described either the content or the location of artworks. As Mooney notes:

“Titles including a word before art have traditionally dealt with subject matters… or with the location of art.”

Corporate Art is different. It is not an art about corporations, nor an art located within corporate spaces. Instead, it is a dialogue between artistic vision and organizational identity.

It seeks to uncover and express what is unique, aspirational, and deeply human within companies, aligning artistic expression with strategic communication.

Whether through installations, branded artworks, or transmedia projects such as Arte da Vestire—where artworks become wearable pashminas—the goal remains the same: to transform communication into experience and identity into narrative.

Art as a Strategic Asset: Branding Through Meaning

The book proposes that art can play a central role in marketing and sales strategies not because it decorates a brand, but because it interprets it. Art gives form to intangible values—vision, culture, legacy—and transforms them into symbols that resonate emotionally and cognitively.

This is why many organizations are undergoing a shift from brand storytelling to art-driven meaning-making.

When an artwork embodies the ethos of an enterprise, it becomes a medium capable of engaging audiences at a deeper level than any slogan or campaign. It builds an environment—physical or symbolic—where values are not communicated but experienced.

In this sense, art anticipates the future of communication: it bypasses information overload and reconnects with the universal human capacity for wonder.

The Artist as Cultural Interpreter

In the contemporary ecosystem, artists do not operate solely within the art world. They are mediators between spheres: cultural, commercial, civic. They help organizations, cities, and movements articulate identities that words cannot fully capture.

The artist thus becomes a translator of meaning, capable of bridging the language of beauty and the grammar of business. The book emphasizes this role explicitly: the artist must identify “new audiences where others just see boundaries and limitations.”

This interpretative function is what allows art communication to become a form of innovation, expanding the expressive and relational capacities of institutions.

Toward a New Paradigm: Art as Social Impact

Finally, the art of communicating art gestures toward a broader responsibility. As shown in international exhibitions—from New York to Milan, from Cannes to Matera—and through sustainable art practices recognized by scholars such as Marco Eugenio di Giandomenico, art becomes a vehicle of social value.

Communicating art means participating in the transformation of society: shaping imaginations, nurturing empathy, and advancing sustainability.

Art’s communicative power is thus inseparable from its capacity to inspire new futures—personal, collective, organizational.

Conclusion: Art Communicates Because It Connects

The central thesis of Corporate Art is simple yet profound: art communicates because it connects.

It connects the artist to their own inner world, the artwork to the viewer, the organization to its values, and society to its aspirations. In a time saturated with information and impoverished in meaning, art communication is not merely a skill or a strategy—it is an act of cultural regeneration.

As stated in the book, “Art unites worlds and is a balm for the soul.”

In the end, communicating art means communicating what makes us human.