“The first Motta visualizes engraving as a means of communication of his personal experience: through a sign of his own invention he portrays the people who are most part of his life. Gradually, the subjects became more abstract, the interest in the portrait faded and a less compressed spatial research in the canons of traditional engraving began. At Brera, he renewed his technical knowledge by approaching cyanotype, carborundum and monotype: it was precisely in this last branch of graphics that he nested a new spatial and sign research, focused entirely on the flight of butterflies and the environment in which they move, creating dreamlike dimensions and evolving them daily. His attention to technique led him to develop a series of carborundum prints, still in progress, where the materiality of silicon powder takes shape in the ships represented on the plate.”