Born in Capaccio in 1921 in the shadow of the temples of Paestum, he feels the need to confront himself with the European avant-garde since he was very young. He graduated in Germany (Hulm) and specialized in restoration of Flemish art in Tubigen (Munich), always in Germany he met the Master Kokoschka of which he became his pupil and that will influence his art for many years.
Numerous are his representations, starting from the personal of 1956 to the Museum Stadt of Hulm; the personal to the Gallery Nuova Bianchi Espinosa of Naples 1991. Equally numerous are its publications on art reviews such as the "Quadrant" 1977, for several years has reported its quotations the newsletter of the 'International Academy of Modern Art.
Gifted with a very ductile technique, perennially oriented to the research of the new, Wilkens' Desiderio has pushed his refined and restless personality at first towards the realism of Factoriano, then to the post-impressionism of the French prophets, the German expressionism, to the gestualism, to the polymaterialism and to the informal with a surprising and productive easiness. The painting inspired by the Cilento landscapes, material, chromatic and brilliant, is expressed with immediacy and essentiality; fundamentally interested, not in the representation of nature, but in the preservation of an infinite and fairy-tale vision.