CAPTIONS IN ENGLISH
Painting cycle dedicated to the reconstruction of the large canvas commissioned by Cola di Rienzo to educate and inform the people about the tragic condition of the city of Rome
2012
Mixed media on wooden panel
Dario Fo
In the second half of the fourteenth century, Cola di Rienzo travelled to Avignon, where the Pope had moved with his entire court—bishops and cardinals alike—and where the new headquarters of the Church had been established. Cola di Rienzo spoke at length with the Pontiff, informed him of the actual conditions in which Rome was living, and succeeded in persuading him to intervene decisively in the political and administrative management of the city. At that time, Rome was in truly tragic chaos: the nobles were at war with one another; the Colonna, the Orsini, the Frangipane and others also demanded that taxes and levies be paid directly to them.
The backdrop depicts a storm on a vast sea. At its centre is a woman devastated by gusts of wind and waves: she is Rome, struggling to withstand that cataclysm. At one side stands a prelate, his garments likewise torn by the wind, while the bodies of drowned women float all around in the turbulent waters. It is an allegory of the famous cities that, through fate and often through a lack of courage and organisation, allowed themselves to be swept away by events.
The allegory is explicit, as is the allusion made by the lion, tigers, bears and wolves to the various princes fighting for supremacy over the city.
At the base of the painting is another woman, majestic and surrounded by many sons and daughters: she is Italy. They have no hope of succeeding unless the people themselves decide to take the field.
Dario Fo
The Landing at Lampedusa
2012
Mixed media on canvas
Dario Fo
Sketch — The Landing at Lampedusa
2012
Mixed media on wooden panel
Dario Fo
With this canvas, we recount the shipwreck of two dilapidated boats laden with immigrants off Lampedusa. Among the victims of this tragedy were women and children. They were part of a desperate humanity which, because of war and famine, had been forced to leave their countries and cross the sea in search of work and of a more humane life.
This is real democracy indeed!
We too suffer from a grave deficiency: a lack of solidarity and civic responsibility.
We are convinced that we are civilised, humane and generous people, but I think we need, from time to time, to revise the lesson and remember our own history of emigration: 27 million emigrants over the course of a century.
Dario Fo
The usual massacre of the innocents
2011
Mixed media on canvas
Dario Fo
Sketch — The usual massacre of the innocents
2011
Mixed media on wooden panel
Dario Fo
For years now, because of the wars that keep breaking out around the world, especially in the third world, populations find themselves having to mourn the victims of those relentless massacres, and naturally children are the ones most affected by that unstoppable slaughter.
Only a few days ago (in the year 2012, editor’s note) we received news that in Syria more than five hundred innocent children were massacred by the tanks of the ruling national army.
In the 1300s Giotto painted two extraordinary frescoes, one in Assisi, the other in Padua, which told in a truly harrowing way the story of the massacre of the innocents in Palestine ordered by Herod; but Herod never died — he is reborn in every generation to renew his slaughter.
Dario Fo
Christmas at San Vittore Prison
2011
Mixed media on canvas
Dario Fo
Sketch — Christmas at San Vittore
2011
Mixed media on wooden panel
Dario Fo
This canvas is the result of a direct experience in which Franca and I personally took part at San Vittore, together with hundreds of inmates clinging to the bars. It depicts the Christmas Mass celebrated by Milan’s Cardinal Tettamanzi more than five years ago—in 2005, editor’s note. As you can see, a great number of prisoners stand behind bars like animals in a zoo. The authorities gather around the altar, almost contrite. We can imagine the astonishment of Jesus, who, resurrected in the rite of the Mass, finds himself there: he who knew trials and judges at close hand, and who was imprisoned before ascending the cross, now finds himself detained among others like him.
It is well known that Italian prisons are, to say the least, unworthy.
Nearly three centuries ago, Voltaire fled France, where he risked trial and conviction. As soon as he crossed the border, he met a German friend from Hamburg, who invited him to settle in his city, where “people are very accommodating; they live in beautiful buildings, have a sumptuous cathedral, and orderly, clean houses.” The great French author replied: “Forgive me, my friend, but I do not need you to praise Hamburg’s buildings, monuments and clean houses. Tell me how people live in your country’s prisons; only then will I understand whether your city is a place where one can live with dignity.”
Dario Fo
Africa
2011
Mixed media on canvas
Dario Fo
Sketch — Africa
2011
Mixed media on wooden panel
Dario Fo
The lands that many native people have lost over the centuries have been plundered by civilised white men. More recently, oil companies, using enormous exploration machinery, have drilled the seabed off those coasts, both on land and at sea.
Every now and then a light flares up from those wells. It is not the light of hope, but the light produced by fires at extraction plants and offshore platforms which, when they explode, spill an immense quantity of polluting crude oil into the sea and across the land.
Finally, pollution caused by hydrocarbon extraction has contaminated already scarce groundwater reserves, creating further problems that are difficult to solve: eternal thirst for the inhabitants and for their crops.
Dario Fo
The L’Aquila Earthquake
2011
Mixed media on canvas
Dario Fo
Sketch — The L’Aquila Earthquake
2011
Mixed media on wooden panel
Dario Fo
It has been three years since this terrible earthquake occurred—in 2009, editor’s note. As almost always happens in Italy, the person responsible for civil protection was unprepared. Or rather, he was completely occupied with receiving relaxing treatments from splendid masseuses, with a condom, naturally… which was then never found. Naturally!
The collapse was devastating; nothing was saved. Churches and buildings fell like skittles.
“Everyone stay calm!” someone shouted. “We will rebuild it better than before, more beautiful and splendid!” Now, three years later, we are here to see that nothing has happened. On the day the first tremors were felt, with the ensuing collapses, while survivors ran desperately in search of shelter, some building contractors were discovered talking on the telephone, laughing happily and toasting the business that this disaster would bring them: cheers! A hundred of these earthquakes!
Dario Fo
Workplace Accidents
2011
Mixed media on canvas
Dario Fo
Sketch — Workplace Accidents
2011
Mixed media on wooden panel
Dario Fo
On 14 February of this year—in 2012, editor’s note—the trial for a horrific tragedy, an enormous massacre of workers, concluded in Turin: more than four thousand deaths caused by asbestos in three different parts of Italy. But, as the wife of one of the victims from Casale Monferrato declared, “the dead will continue for who knows how many more years. Today, men aged fifty or sixty are dying; at the time, they were children who innocently played among the abandoned asbestos waste and scraps.”
The two business owners responsible for these repeated crimes were sentenced to sixteen years in prison, but they will not serve even one day behind bars, since they live abroad—one in Latin America and one in Brussels. Hurray! They will be able to live out their remaining years happily, dancing if they can!
The number of people killed in workplace accidents is nothing short of shocking. There is not a week in which victims are not counted, as if in war.
When you hear an ambulance siren, think that one in five is taking a worker, male or female, to the emergency room: someone who has fallen victim to the logic that says, “progress and production demand their victims.”
The proportion of injured people who will remain disabled for the rest of their lives is nothing short of monstrous. They will live as society’s cast-offs. Profit condemns them to a third-class existence. A forty-year-old victim who lost his legs in an accident recounted: “I often dream that I am dancing, running and diving into the water as I did when I was a boy. What angers me most is that the business owners responsible for my condition are free and can run and dance whenever they please.”
Dario Fo
The Tower of Babel and the Messina Bridge
2011
Mixed media on canvas
Dario Fo
The most recent government, just put into aspic—in 2011, editor’s note—and into the freezer, had promised works of great scale and industrial ambition. Every project appeared like the Tower of Babel: plans, solemn inaugurations, and newly erected structures that came to a halt. Only the mother of all projects seemed to remain standing: the bridge across the Strait of Messina.
Here too, projects galore. “We start tomorrow.” “We have already started.” “Soon you will see the arch rise into the sky, linking Sicily to the motherland, to Europe!” But only yesterday the European Union gave the order: “Enough of this money-guzzling farce. Nothing will come of it!” The duped citizens look at one another like fools; they climb in clusters onto their neighbours’ backs, as in a children’s game, to imitate the tower, but then they all collapse to the ground. A great deal of money—€230 million as of 30 October 2011—was thrown away on this farce, on plans that are now waste paper, fit only to be discarded!
Dario Fo