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Resistance and Pride: The Murals of Orgosolo, Sardinia
Abstract
The small town of Orgosolo in the mountains of Sardinia is known for its murals: hundreds of them in a town of only 5,000 inhabitants. although murals exist throughout Sardinia, those of Orgosolo are noteworthy because of their political content. This article describes the origins of the mural tradition in the events of the late 1960s and early 1970s in the town. The combination of a left-wing council and youth group, as well as the powerful influence of an art teacher, led to the start of a process that continues to this day. The murals are classified into four interrelated themes: war, resistance, ethnic pride and resonance. But most importantly, the relevance of the mural tradition is placed in the context of the rejection by local people of northern Italian stereotypes which display them as backward shepherds and bandits, wedded inexorably to tradition and the rejection of progress.
Content
Author and article information
Notes
Four men stand in a circle facing each other, each with a hand over one ear in order to maintain pitch and harmony. There is no additional musical accompaniment. One sings an antiphon, usually a line from a well-known poem in the Sard language. The other three answer. Two of them sing in deep guttural notes. However, they do not repeat the antiphon; rather they sing nonsense syllables. Their carefully harmonized sounds are said to imitate the cries of sheep, cattle and the wind.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2eylja3d9E; accessed 12 March 2013.
On the more general point that enclosures were central to the emergence of a working class beyond Italy, see Humphries ( 1990). And on the point that in the English and American cases, the commons were anathema to a particular Protestant mindset which condemned the failure to transform the land through labour, see Thompson (1991: 159–75).
Interview with Giovanni Muravera, 12 May 2012.
According to Giovanni Moro, former mayor of Orgosolo (in interview, 10 May 2012) these murals had little political effect.
Interview with Pietrina Rubanu, 9 May 2012.
Interview with Pasquale Buesca, 11 May 2012.
Mussolini.
The quotation is based on Bertold Brecht's Galileo. One character, Andrea, says: “Unhappy is the land that breeds no hero.” Galileo replies: “No, Andrea. Unhappy is the land that needs a hero.”
They are copied from photographs taken at Pratobello in 1969 by Franco Pinna, which are on show in the main library in town.
The operation had been labelled “Big Game”, and later the lieutenant in charge of the operation, Julius Bechi, recounted the events in his book of the same name.
It tells the story of a shepherd wrongfully accused of crime. He runs away with his flock, but, when the sheep die, he is forced to turn to crime to survive.
Miguel Hernàndez was a Spanish poet who supported the republicans against Franco. Jailed by the fascists after Franco's victory, he died in jail of tuberculosis in 1942.
This was the slogan of L'Ordine Nuovo ( The New Order), the newspaper established by Gramsci and others in Turin in 1919.
In 1998, Del Casino was given honorary citizenship of the town of Orgosolo (Heatherington 2002: 16).
Interview with Pasquale Buesca, 11 May 2012. One month after this interview Francesco Del Casino returned to Orgosolo and painted ten new murals, many in honour of Vittorio de Seta, director of Bandits of Orgosolo, who died in November 2011 ( La Nuova Sardegna, 24 June 2012).