Painting is Mario Loprete’s first love. Creating a painting, he starts from the spasmodic research of a concept with which he wants to transmit his message--this is the foundation of painting for him. He likes to think that those who look at his sculptures created in 2020 will be able to perceive the anguish, the vulnerability, the fear that each of us has felt in front of the planetary problem that was COVID-19. Under a layer of cement are the clothes in which he lived this nefarious period, clothes that survived COVID-19, very similar to what survived after the 2,000-year-old catastrophic eruption of Pompeii. They are capable of recounting man's inability to face the tragedy of broken lives and destroyed economies.