Time.news – Palermo rediscovers its ‘Vucciria’, and Renato Guttuso resumes ‘dialogue’ at Palazzo Steri, the building that was the seat of the Inquisition, with Leonardo Sciascia, who in the Bagheria painter had captured “the fellow countryman, the friend – his irresistible vitality and sympathy, his word, his gesture – his gesture that from life borders on art without solution of continuity … “.
The writer from Racalmuto, who even after the rupture between the two on the Moro case has never denied these words, drew precisely from the graffiti of the prisoners at the Steri material for his “Death of the Inquisitor”, in which he recounts the murder of Juan Lopez de Cisneros by Diego La Matina, a heretic in whom Sciascia found his own spiritual ancestor. It was his friend Guttuso who drew, with the black line of death, the moment in which that rebellion had resulted in blood in a liberating and ferocious moment; it was he who in the canvas he guessed, in an amazing way, what would have been discovered by the researchers years later: the place of the Steri where Diego La Matina killed his persecutor (a room with a staircase in the background).
The reference between the two intellectuals
The reference between the two great Sicilian intellectuals has been continuous over the years, fruitful, and seems destined to continue. The ‘Vucciria’, the most famous painting by Renato Guttuso, has, in fact, returned to the Steri, a few meters from the graffiti that disturbed Sciascia. By taking a few steps, it is possible to establish an axis – almost impossible, almost incredible – between the two sides of the soul: passion, which emerges overwhelmingly from the brushstrokes of the Bagherese, and reason, embodied in the writing of the author of Racalmuto.
Before returning to Palermo, the Vucciria, which tells of the now legendary market of the city, had been transferred to the Sala della Lupa in Montecitorio. Today, underlines the University of Palermo, it is visible in “a brand new, immersive, poignant envelope, the heart of the new visit path that returns the Steri to the city”.
A work painted in two months in 1974
Guttuso painted the canvas over a few months, in 1974, bringing daily fruit and vegetables to his studio in Velate to recreate and thus be able to reproduce the colors of the Palermo market. Today the painting has resumed its place in the ancient armory room of the medieval building, on the ground floor, where it was placed in 2004 on the initiative of the then rector Giuseppe Silvestri. Here the ‘Vucciria’ – 3 meters x 3 meters, Guttuso used an elevator to paint it to work at height – was placed in a niche that “welcomes it like an embrace”. “The rough-hewn figures – explain the curators of the location – move among fish, fruit, vegetables, quarters of meat”. “A large still life – wrote Guttuso – with a tunnel in the middle where people flow and meet”.
The view is immersed in the colors and movements of the figures (“Of all the characters in the picture we can in fact ask ourselves: are they appearing or disappearing?”, Wondered Andrea Camilleri); the ear is aimed at grabbing the rumors of the market – the typical “banniate” – recorded and preserved in the archives of the Cricd, the Regional Catalog Center. The exhibition, curated by Marco Carapezza, Paolo Inglese and Maria Concetta Di Natale and created by the architect Maria Carla Lenzo, is completed by some panels with biography, critical notes, writings by colleagues and intellectuals, a sketch published by Villabianca dell ‘ ancient Bocceria; on the monitors scroll video contributions from the Teche Rai, from the “Diary of Guttuso” made by Giuseppe Tornatore in 1982 and from the 1975 documentary “How is a work of art born”.
© University of Palermo, exhibition at Steri
Renato Guttuso
“An icon of the city”
“Today is a much awaited moment – underlined the Rector of the University of Palermo, Fabrizio Micari – Lo Steri, which in each of its stones preserves a piece of the history of Palermo, and the Vucciria di Guttuso, an icon representative of our city with its colors and lights but also with its shadows, they can be visited again (from 5 June) in a guise that even more enhances the reality of a simply extraordinary historical context and work “. “The Vucciria di Guttuso becomes the all-round protagonist of the centuries-old history of Palazzo Chiaromonte, with a very refined setting, full of sounds, lights, images and critical descriptions that make the experience of the visit extraordinary in a context, that of the Sala delle Armi of the Steri, absolutely unique “, underlines Inglese, director of the museum system of Ateneo Simua.
The ‘Vucciria’ is certainly Renato Guttuso’s most famous painting. “It is – Marco Carapezza, vice president of the Guttuso Archives explains to Time.news – for two reasons: perhaps the Crucifixion is his most beautiful painting, but this is a unique picture because it captures the soul of Palermo, which has adopted it as an identity code. Palermo considers this canvas to be its strongest representation: we realize this by seeing around the quantity of reproductions of this painting in shops, in private homes; in short, it was adopted by ordinary people. Here lies, as well as in the international fame that surrounds it, its uniqueness. The city recognizes itself in it: it shows strong passions, such as food, sensuality, the sociability of the market. And death. It is that sense of death that permeates Palermo: you look at the knife that pierces the meat of the ox, that chopped swordfish. Brandi spoke of a ‘black picture’, in which black outlines all things and accompanies this sense of death. Palermo, which subdues for its beauty, its charm and its wealth, is a city of death “.
Just a few days ago the Vucciria, the one ‘outside’ the canvas, was the scene of a murder: “Exactly. Palermo – underlines Carapezza – sees death continually present. This canvas is a living nature, but at the same time it is a black painting. The ability to make the short circuit between these two things is the reason for its popular success. “
The Vucciria no longer exists
The Vucciria that Guttuso painted, in reality, no longer exists, engulfed in a nightlife that has made those places the same as those of dozens of cities in the rest of the planet. “In a certain sense, some say – adds Carapezza – the painting ‘killed’ the Vucciria. After its composition, the Vucciria enters the crosshairs of particular attention. Cinema, for example: until the 1970s, films shot in Palermo did not have that market at the center. After the painting, a particular attention is born: no film set in Palermo can do without the Vucciria market. The kind of attention, however, transformed that market, making it the place where artists, even of completely different lines, went to live “.
If it is the “strong passions” that move Guttuso’s brush, reason returns, with his friend Sciascia, to pick up its own thread. “In Palermo, a market is something more than a market, that is, a place where food is sold and where people go to buy. It is a vision, a dream, a mirage. A visual eating“, wrote the latter, before the friendship between the two was broken.” The dialogue between the two was interrupted, but at the same time it never stopped. Sciascia – underlines Caraprezza – republishes his text on Guttuso, and he remains deeply attached to the latter. A wonderful but not passionate man, Sciascia cried when we told him that Guttuso was ill. We are at the end of 1986-beginning of 1987. This dialogue was abruptly interrupted because the friendship had been strong and Guttuso had been the painter of Sciascia. One of them had been the representation of Sicily that the other wanted“.
In the palace that was the seat of a brutal and arbitrary power, today the two great Sicilians tell their truths, the two different rebellions: “La Vucciria is a market – concludes Carapezza pointing to the photos on the walls – and it is no coincidence that here beside “Piazza Caracciolo, in the background, is dedicated to the viceroy who abolished the Inquisition forever. In the market everything is visible, in the Inquisition everything is covered”. The Inquisitor, from room to room in the Steri palace, was defeated.
© Fabio Greco, reproduction at Steri palace
The death of the Inquisitor, by Renato Guttuso for the book by Leonardo Sciascia. The painter guessed the place where that murder took place.
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