Why was this Artist used for the PIRELLI CALENDAR 2009 ?

Why is this Artist quoted in the PIRELLI CALENDAR 2009 ?

Throughout his career the main feature of ORAZI was a passion for the physical manifestations of the might of Nature, the emotion he felt when facing those materials through which She expresses her infinite creativity. Nature’s grand events, her processes and powers, and her components –firmaments, lights, rocks, volcanic lava, sands, seabeds, ancient plants traversing the centuries with their powerful trunks– fascinated this Painter.

The work of ORAZI from the Peinture en Relief artistic period expresses his desire to recreate such extraordinary atmospheres, and forms of nature. A nature lived as a body throbbing with life. To realize the creations of this period, in which actual reliefs were embossed from the canvas, the Painter sought out natural materials, which he mixed with glues or plaster and colours. It was, in fact, a fusion of sculpting and painting. For this reason in France this painting style was called Art de Matières or Peinture de Matières.
Hence it was an artistic research, which shows several points in common with the research of the Photographer, Peter Beard, and the evocation of nature he expressed in the PIRELLI CALENDAR 2009.