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| The Grandma in Orgòsolo, Barbagia |
If you are in Sardìnnia and you love these things, you must visit Orgòsolo, the town of the mural paintings.
Before deciding this new visit, The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her Elementary Language Practice manual (Checkpoint 1 & Grammar 7).
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Orgòsolo is a comune (municipality) located in the Province of Nuoro, in Sardinia, at about 110 kilometres north of Casteddu/Cagliari and about 13 kilometres south of Nuoro. The municipality is famous for its murales.
These political paintings can be found on walls all over Orgosolo. Since about 1969, the murales reflect different aspects of Sardinia's political struggles but also deal with international issues.
More information: Comune di Orgosolo
Vittorio De Seta's movie Banditi a Orgosolo (1961) focuses on the past way of life in central Sardinia and on the phenomenon of Banditry in the region. At one time Orgosolo was known as the village of the murderers due to its high crime rate. Bandits of the surrounding mountains used the church door to post notices of death sentence passed on their enemies.
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| Joseph de Ca'th Lon in Orgòsolo, Barbagia |
The first mural in Orgosolo was signed by Dioniso in 1969: Dioniso was the collective name of a group of anarchists. Just a few years later, in remembrance of the Resistance and Liberation of Italy from Nazism and Fascism, a transplanted Sienese middle school teacher and his former students painted additional murals, to which various artists and local groups gradually added their own creations.
More information: Italian Ways
Although Orgosolo was where the Italian muralist tradition began, other towns like San Sperate, Villamar and Serramanna have cultivated this art for years, a cultural and social phenomenon that expresses still today global and international themes. Numerous murals adorn so many communities in Sardinia’s inland provinces, and they portray in their own beautiful language the culture and customs of the local people.
The island’s passion for mural art dates back to, among anonymous others, Pinuccio Sciola, a group of Milanese architects and, one could even say, to the aforementioned instructor, Francesco del Casino during the student protests of the 1960s, all of whom authored their own works.
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| Tina Picotes in Orgòsolo, Barbagia |
Orgosolo's mural emerged in the late 60's. It was during the time when Italy’s economy miracle collapsed by massive strikes and social unrest. Especially, the later 1973 oil crisis abruptly terminated this economy boom. Thus, murals became a major expression of the social discontent.
The first mural in Orgosolo is carried out in 1969 by Dionisio, an anarchist theater company in Milan. She questioned: "What is the role of the island in the Italian government's policy?” After the idea of mural spread into this small village, a local teacher, Francesco Del Casino, played an important role. The early works was carried out by his students.
More information: Visitare la Sardegna
Later on, more experienced workers took the job, making the murals more elaborate both in the style and in the content. Francesco Del Casino will be the instigator of most paintings of the village of Orgosolo. One of his major motivations was to get students involved in politics. Therefore, murals were featured by the oppression of Nazism, struggling for liberation, unemployment ratio and education problem. Even though many kinds of topics were introduced, political events are still the major topics of the mural.
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| Claire Fontaine in Orgòsolo, Barbagia |
Strikes, demonstrations, petitions plagued across the country. The country showed signs of recovery around 1983. Then, it moved toward a new period of economic expansion. The growing economy gave advantages to the government to make improvements. More national infrastructure as well as better social health care, education system were built up. This improvement also reflected in murals and paintings. During this period, some of the murals depicted Sardinian village daily life. With the boom of the new economy, people started to look back into their lives with fresh eyes.
More information: Sardegna Turismo
At the same time, mural creators have broadened their view alone with the renaissance of global economy. More and more murals related to global political events were produced, such as the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, Pratobello protest event, protest against G8 in Genoa, destruction of twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City in 9-11 attack.
Since the 1990s, with the increase of tourism and the development of international cultural projects, the Orgosolo’s mural has drawn wide attention from all over the world. Organization, such as SCI (Service Civil International) has set up workshops of painting murals in Sardinia.
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| Tonyi Tamaki in Orgòsolo, Barbagia |
Therefore, murals in Sardinia have turned into an intellectual recognition rather than tools of political protest in the olden time. Meanwhile, Sardinia has opened a procedure for recognition of the status of works of art for these unique paintings.
And the techniques as used by Sardinia’s muralists are simple: water-based paints, essentially interior house paints, that easily deteriorate but that pop aesthetically and can easily be retouched if and when the will on the part of the community exists. Styles are diverse and range from Impressionism to Hyperrealism, and from Naïve Art to Realism.
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In Carbonia-Iglesias, Ozieri and San Teodoro, even the houses have become certifed canvases for artistic experimentation that, whether intentionally or no, remained connected to the graffiti of Lescaux and Pompeii, for instance, to Mexicans Diego Rivera’s and Josè Clemente Orozco revolutionary painting, and to contemporary street art, whether that of Lex&Sten in Italy, Shepard Fairey in America or Banksy in the UK.
Sardinia's murals today represent a new form of urban decor, but they are fundamentally a message of collectivity, of a collective spirit, expressed through art and interpreted and judged by the collective of all those that view them.
The process for the mural creator to perceive, digest all the global events and presented finally in the fashion of mural is very complicated. All the related subject such as anthropology, history, politics, sociology and esthetics must be considered altogether.
Mural serves as a contest, celebration and protesting. Mural became an education method and turned into a unique local culture. Murals are becoming the object of an operation of heritage conservation.
More information: The Guardian
Painting is silent poetry,
and poetry is painting that speaks.
Plutarch
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