San Sperate, artists in mourning: «Once upon a time there was a museum town»

'Creative' protest by the artists of San Sperate, a town just a few minutes from Cagliari, original and exclusive with its over 500 murals and hundreds of sculptures and installations, many of which were created by Pinuccio Sciola, the sculptor of sound stones known throughout the world, the first to have taken action to transform his town into an open-air museum.

In recent years, however, San Sperate has become a shadow of itself : degradation has affected and compromised its artistic vocation, deprived today of that attraction that made it famous internationally. Thus, today at dawn, several artists, in the front row Maria Sciola, daughter of Pinuccio and local cultural associations, were the protagonists of a mobilization called "Nero piangere".

The most important monument in the country, the iconic Monument of Fruit, designed by Sciola and Angelo Pilloni, was packed away while several drips were hung on the now faded and deteriorated murals.

All this on the day in which San Sperate is a stop of Open Monuments, but this year the Sciola family has decided not to make the Sound Garden available to visitors, which has always enchanted tourists and television crews from all over the world.

"The lack of answers and the inability to address the problems of the country's decorum fill me with bitterness - confesses Maria Sciola explaining the reason for the closure of the Garden -. It is sad to note how the great utopia, one of the first acts of public art in Italy, has currently given way only to the new speculative constructions that invade the country, forgetting or even worse ignoring the incredible potential that San Sperate could still express".

(Online Union)