The year when Diamante changed appearance
1981: a creative mind named Nani Razetti, an artist, two whimsical eyes come from Northern Italy who found love in Calabria, decided it was time to upset the ordinary popular imagination in Diamante.
This charming village of ancient seafaring traces in the province of Cosenza, affectionately skimmed by the Tyrrhenian Sea, was marked by Contemporary Art.
The greatest collective artistic performance ever, in Calabria
Razetti was supported by the mayor, Evasio Pascale. They organized the greatest collective artistic performance we’ve ever seen in Calabria.
More than 80 painters from all over Italy and even from Europe and America came in June, they mingled with the locals, they wanted to discover the genius loci.
They climbed on scaffolding stuck in the narrow alleys of the old village, and they realized the Murales for which Diamante is still known today.
Colors and outlines on the walls of the houses, which became amazing paintings, unexpected vivid colors that have crept on gray and decrepit plasters.
Through those images, world, society and local habits were told. Messages were launched. Criticisms about the evolving society were shown. Symbols and local traditions were honored.
Razetti wanted to select artists who were fully free to comment that community, artists who had no links with the culture of the territory.
Diamante becomes tourist destination, led by the great Peperoncino Festival
Murales were the beginning of the history of Diamante as a tourist destination, enriched in the 2000s by the extraordinary September event of the Peperoncino Festival, an international event to mark on the agenda.
Spicy addicted and food lovers can’t wait this annual meeting.
Operation Street Art in Diamante
After 1981, on several occasions, a series of cultural events were organized to add more murales.
We cite the magnificent and visionary OSA concept – Operation Street Art, that has generated incredible works, which stand out on condominium walls and justify the nickname of Diamante: “the land of the noses upwards” that Nani Razetti himself coined.
Razetti’s will
May be his hidden desire was to astound, to look up and be amazed. Razetti wanted the residents and visitors to enjoy the wonder, and at the same time, through art, to discuss what we have been and what we have become.
Diamante: a village that by means of art finds an energy of ideas that look at the future.
Core Calabro’s murales tour in Diamante
Among the murales – which we will analyze in a special report – we point out that special one, by Baruch Kadmon, who portrayed The Family – a remarkable shot of the photographer Paul Strand.
That’s a very famous atypical picture of a family ensemble, that was chosen for the photographic book “Un Paese”, written with the genius Cesare Zavattini.
A poor family unit, workers on the doorstep waiting for a call to earn some coins, the woman who governs the economy and suffers with patience and courage.
You see the bicycle that seems to come from Vittorio De Sica’s movie. It was the only way to communicate in that Italy.
A weak country – Italy, waiting for help, to be rebuilt at the end of the 40s and beginning of the 50s. Kadmon used shades that leave you amazed, you don’t know when the color of the artist ends and when the shade of the real wall begins.
The theme is extraordinarily well placed in the context of walls, bricks and stones.