Motivi – motifs. Why not Signs, which is a more common leitmotif in art? The reason is in the strong connection between the work of Luigi Battisti and contemporary music. His work is in fact in continuous evolution, where harmony is dictated by the rhythm of aesthetic synthesis, just as if it were a musical score. “In music, tonality, or the tonal centre of a composition, is analogous to the painter’s pictorial plane.  It determines the degree of audibility (visibility), as well as timbre (colour)”. These are the words of Morton Feldman, an American composer whom Battisti cites as an inspiration. His compositions were often accompanied with writings on subjects such as the connection between music and painting. The “Motivi” project was born by reading some similarities between musical motifs and carpet motifs: “When a composer transposes musical thought into notes on a repeated ictus, a grid has been imposed, as if a ruler were used. Music and the repetitive design or pattern of carpets have a lot in common.” Another of Feldman’s essays not only examines the correlations between music and painting, but also explains that he was very interested in the structure of carpets and the connection between music, drawing and carpet design schemes. He was also known to be an avid collector of Anatolian carpets. Luigi Battisti’s “Motivi” project is inspired mainly by his observation of antique Tibetan carpets, which exhibit formal patterns that are often abstract and symmetrical, and not only in a generic way. The artist does not process them in a philological sense, but makes formal changes to some details, creating new lines and altering their relationships. He breaks them down, reconstructs and reinterprets them in new forms, applied to the canvases using new colour layering techniques.