In less than 24 hours, the mural depicting "Silvio Berlusconi, Self-Made Man" by the artist aleXsandro Palombo, which appeared yesterday morning in the Isola district of Milan in front of the building where CavaIiere grew up, was vandalized with offensive and abusive writing together with his mother Rosa, his father Luigi, his sister Maria Antonietta and his brother Paolo, and where there is still that living room that was his bedroom from the age of 13 onwards, with a view of the place that once housed the headquarters historian of the Milanese Communist Party.
The work portrays Berlusconi in an elegant blue suit with his ever-present polka dot tie, in one hand a bucket with glue and the inscription Self-Made Man, in the other hand a brush soaked in glue with which a plaque has been affixed toponymy that shows the new indication of the place "Via Silvio BERLUSCONI 1936-2023".
The abusive sentences were promptly canceled by the residents of the neighborhood who since yesterday, together with many onlookers arriving from all over the city, have been going to the site to take pictures of the work.
aleXsandro Palombo had decided to leave his mark on the island, the district that the Cavaliere had never forgotten and which saw him grow and form, once a working-class place and the beating heart of the Milanese Communist Party and today a fashionable and luxury district , dominated by the skyscrapers symbol of financial capitalism of the new futuristic Milan.
The artist wrote on his Instagram page: «Italian politics continues to divide and clash even on what to name in memory of the Knight. Two weeks have passed since the death of Silvio Berlusconi and today via Volturno, the street in the Isola district of Milan where Berlusconi grew up, has become "via Silvio BERLUSCONI". Also on this occasion the Cavaliere was the fastest of all».
It is not the first time that the artist aleXsandro Palombo portrays important political personalities of our time: he had recently created the work "Power is Female" portraying the Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and the leader of the Democratic Party Elly Schlein, to address the theme of women's rights, freedom of thought and the question of surrogacy.
In 2015, the portrayal of celebrities such as Kim Kardashian or Angelina Jolie who were victims of violence caused a sensation with the series of works "Break the Silence" on the theme of MeToo. In 2019 he had instead immortalized the most powerful women in the world, from Angela Merkel to Michelle Obama, as victims of violence: in 2021 the series was acquired by the funds of the Louvre Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris, becoming part of the funds of the collection permanent national.
(Unioneonline/vl)