Luxembourg Art Price 2022

 

 

TRANSAV-(GUARDIA)-MAFIA» by Florido Pontani, 1982

Oil on canvas, H. 120 x L. 80 cm

Some of the artistic production of Florido Pontani takes shape by strong themes addressed during the years in the State Police. In particular, in this painting he wanted to represent the struggle of the Italian State against the Mafia using the metaphor of the boot relative to the geographical shape of Italy, often associated with a boot precisely, and the image of the leg part above the boot -The dressed-up one with which the jargon of the Neapolitan camorra defined the Mafia.

Therefore, reading the elements as a whole: the Mafia lives in Italy, it creeps into it, it is like a dress, a trouser that slips into the boot itself (Italy precisely). But the boot also has another meaning that is an instrument of repression against the Mafia: to look at it looks like a typical boot of the Police, be they State Police or Carabinieri, It thus becomes a metaphor for a force of control and struggle to repress what is against the state itself.

The message of this painting is one of hope: a large flag of Italy emerges from the leg, and this flag is like that planted by the winners. Hope is the victory of the state over the Mafia: it is the eternal struggle of good against evil and the final triumph of good (the state) over evil (the Mafia).

This picture was born in years of great ferment - the early eighties - and of fighting the Mafia by the Italian State and is a precursor of the Maxiprocesso of Palermo, started in 1986 and concluded in 1992, the largest criminal trial with criminal convictions ever in Italian history: a historic triumph of the state over the Mafia.

https://www.luxembourgartprize.com

Certificate of Merit 2023