Guido Dettoni della Grazia (Milan, 1946) is author of tactile and visual art, collective artistic performances, and sensory experiences with attention to sacred art, which is since 2000 the subject of his permanent exhibition in Assisi at the church of Santa Maria delle Rose.
“Seeing with the hands and touching with the eyes” is a significant feature of the hands sized works he creates in blindness with malleable matter.

He has practiced art since childhood, having lived in various countries in Europe and West Africa. He has exhibited, installed works, and led collective artistic experiences in Europe, Asia, Canada, the United States, Colombia and Australia. His first exhibitions date back to 1968/69 in Germany.  Chronology from 1960 to 2024.

Since 1999 he has developed the complementarity between “the real” and “the virtual”, employing digital tools and 3D animation. Some of his hand-sized sculptures, once enlarged, contain us, so that “we are contained by what we contain”. Once reduced, they also become portable. They are often a multisensory experience when integrates by sound, fragrance, and an edible element.

In the seventies, he realized that his method of “making art” could also be collective. So he started to hold workshops he called MANIMATERIA. This creative process has found various applications: in the artistic field (Europe, West Africa, Singapore, North and South America), in the disability sector with deafblind people (Catalonia, USA and Canada), and in teaching and therapy (Catalonia and the Balearic Islands).
He often TRANSMUTATES the forms created during a workshop in order to generate his own work related to the theme that inspired the participants.

“The hands are mirrors of each other; two halves that form unity, the brain, source of speech. Hand-brain-speech. With our hands we manifest our feelings and emotions and we can shape within ourselves the reality that surrounds us, also because we are touching it and, at the same time, touched by it.” (Guido Dettoni -Reflections on art)