Forbes Italy’s long-awaited list of Under 30 talents for 2023 has just come out, and in its extension of the 100 young people who will change society is the name of Francesco Persichella aka Piskv, included in the Art & Style section. Piskv (1993) is a well-known street artist, born in Bari, raised in Camosa di Puglia and now adopted by Rome, where since 2011 he has been noted for his numerous interventions, such as the recent (2021) redevelopment of a degraded basketball court in the San Lorenzo neighborhood, in collaboration with Redbull.
Francesco Persichella is an architect and visual artist who finds in street art the perfect marriage between architecture and art, his two great passions. Piskv’s style is graphic and colorful, with well-defined lines and marked contours. His connection with the world of basketball is most evident from his important collaboration with the NBA for which he represents Italy on the occasion of the league’s 75th anniversary, as well as his tribute to Kobe Bryant. Among Piskv’s most important murals are portraits dedicated to Italian actors such as Alberto Sordi, Lino Banfi and Carlo Verdone. In 2022 he created the longest sustainable mural in Italy, over 100 meters painted at the Valmontone (RM) outlet.
Among doctors, innovators, engineers and entrepreneurs, it is interesting to note that Forbes Italy chose to award not a more institutional figure in the art world such as a young critic or curator, but a street artist. This underscores and explicates the communicative power and strong impact of street art on the public, capable of changing the urban landscape particularly that of the suburbs and honoring prominent figures in culture, giving the entire movement, in case we needed it, additional relevance.
