The world of cycling mourns a great friend: Giò Di Batte left us today. Born in Livorno in 1944. Di Batte was a renowned and appreciated artist and a passionate cycling enthusiast, so much so that he created numerous works to celebrate the achievements of great champions. His works were often exhibited in cycling contexts and important competitions such as the Giro d'Italia.

In this sad moment, our heartfelt condolences go to his wife Roberta, his son Daniele, who was a professional cyclist for some years, and to Giò's entire family from the editorial staff of tuttoBICI, tuttobiciweb and tuttobicitech.  

He always loved the colors of cycling, and Giò Di Batte, with his colors, made the world more beautiful. Today cycling loses a friend, a great enthusiast, a true lover of our sport, who was able to sketch with mastery, wisdom and grace a discipline that transcended the limits of the road, entering the world of art. A well-rounded artist, Giò, who after practicing cycling as a young man kept that bicycle in his heart and mind, giving vent to two passions: painting and two wheels.

He was nicknamed "the painter of cyclists," but perhaps this definition was too reductive, even though Giò, an incurable romantic, didn't mind it one bit. He harbored an unconditional love for the bicycle, for the Giro d'Italia and for the Tour de France, to which he gave his creativity.

Giò Di Batte would not need an introduction, because for years he was a friend of riders and organizers, being a regular at races, together with Roberta, his beloved wife, and little Daniele, who, as he grew up, also gave him the satisfaction of racing and reaching the world of the greats.

He, great, he truly was, and testimony to this are the dozens and dozens of exhibitions he held in Italy and Europe, as well as the attention received from major national and international newspapers, including those of a sports nature.

His journey in the world of art begins from far back. As a young boy he is encouraged by his father, who sees great artistic talents in his son; for this reason little Giò dedicates himself body and soul to the practice of cycling and the study of painting. Strength and passion, experience and technique, are the basis of these two disciplines, apparently distant yet very close: Giò made them almost the same thing. Sport and painting united by a common love, fueled by his creativity and an absolutely personal use of color.

In 1972 he is invited to the national exhibition of contemporary artists in the cloister of the friars of Pietrasanta, together with Annigoni and Acci, Miró and Gentilini, Primo Conti and Lucio Fontana, Ana Salvatore and Scanavino. Perhaps, however, the greatest emotion was his participation in the XII Quadriennale d'Arte in Turin, in 1974, in the company of big names like Cantatore and De Chirico, Baj and Sassu, Guttuso and Brindisi. But cycling always remained there, sometimes in the background and other times in the foreground, depending on his mood, depending on his rediscovered love.

Many and evocative are the works dedicated to cyclists: from Marco Pantani to Felice Gimondi, from Eddy Merckx to Francesco Moser, from Beppe Saronni to Claudio Chiappucci. His brushes generated emotion, relaunching champions and their stories. He immortalized toil and sweat in splendid landscape scenarios, made of mountains and plains, sunflower fields and olive groves. He never spoke of defeats, perhaps not even of victories, but only of protagonists, of men, and their lives.

Thus he becomes "the painter of cyclists" and his fame transcends national borders. The Congress Center "Il Ciocco," on the occasion of the 78th Giro d'Italia, invites him to exhibit his works, among which some paintings inspired by the poetics of great cycling, without ever forgetting, not for a moment, nature: his true source of inspiration.

Thanks to an inspired and loose hand, soft and spontaneous, he manages to create moments of profound sensitivity through compositions of objects from another time (inkwells, pitchers and antique objects), appreciated by many friends who have made collections of them, from Alcide Cerato to Vittorio Feltri, who, as editor of the newspaper "Libero," in January 2007 pays him homage by dedicating to him, in the "Costume & Society" column, an extensive feature.

His works are part of private collections in the United States, Germany, France and the Czech Republic, as well as being present in various Italian cities such as Florence and Rome, Milan and Palermo, Turin and many others.

Today that hand of his has stopped, laying down a brush that knew how to make his dreams visible. Today that blank canvas can no longer be colored. We are left with the memory of a love and his works, testimony to what he was and what will continue to be. Forever.