A Trip Around Sicily with Nine Mad Artists

By Terrelibere

Bentivegna carved thousands of heads near Selinunte. Cammarata spent fifty years embellishing his shack/house with Gaudì type sculptures. Gambino made drawings with his biro on the paper he used to wrap the roasted pumpkin seeds he sold from his stall. The work only finished when the ink ran out.

Appreciated abroad, derided and unacknowledged at home. Many of their works have been destroyed. Nine Sicilians united by their illiteracy and obsessive urge to express themselves.

An itinerary through the places of the Sicilian outsider artists. Among their works. In their towns. Tracing a route around the island. Experiencing sights, sounds and tastes outside the traditional circuits.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Publisher s23218
• Release date: Nov 30, 2014
• ISBN: 9786050339536

Book preview

travellers.

Introduction. Compulsive, Uneducated, Inspired

One was captured by the British and became their friend by building a castle. He passed his life embellishing his shack with cement structures and pieces of glass until they destroyed it to make a supermarket carpark. Another came back from America, bought three hectares on the slopes of Mount Cronio and for fifty years sculpted thousands of stone heads, painting them pink. Yet another sold roasted pumpkin seeds on the beachfront in Palermo. He created elegant drawings with his biro – the work was only completed when the ink ran out – and sold them to passing tourists - and sometimes to Enzo Sellerio and Leonardo Sciascia. The last modelled heads in the Favignana tufa and cemented them onto the locals’ houses without their consent. He ended up carving rocks in the coves.

Nine Sicilians united by obsession and illiteracy. Artists with an urge to express themselves, often derided in their home towns, highly regarded and prized elsewhere. Most of Bentivegna’s heads were stolen, Cammarata’s house was almost entirely destroyed. To prevent further degradation, the University of Palermo has set up an observatory on Outsider artists to recall those of the past and foster living ones. There have been numerous European initiatives, including the international museum in Lausanne, a research group in Paris and an analogous observatory in Randers, Denmark.

Who are the outsider artists? Eva Di Stefano, lecturer in Contemporary Art in Palermo university and director of the Observatory, tells us: «The French artist Dubuffet spoke of Art Brut, with reference to the raw nature of the work (brut champagne has no sugar added). The British historian Roger Cardinal instead stresses the artist’s social standing. Outsider art is very different from naïf art which is based on the artist’s cultural ingenuity and a commercial agreement with his sponsor. Even when they try to enter official circuits outsiders remain true to form. They often give away their work or ask ridiculously inflated prices.

The Man of the Heads

The most famous of all is Filippo Bentivegna. He emigrates to the United States around 1912. He shows up in the American patents office with a multiple-spout coffee maker and new types of lifebelt. Then he returns to Sicily and