« H O M E / Museo ORION
ART AND ARCHITECTURE / Sala MIGNECO
Guttuso, the metaphysical light of the Strait...
Renato Guttuso (Bagheria, Palermo, 1911 – Roma 1987) moved to Rome from his native Sicily while still very young after his first futurist paintings. In Rome he came into contact with artists of the Roman school and with the future organisers of “Corrente”, the important anti-fascist artistic movement that he joined from 1940 to 1942. His painting was influenced by Picasso, by the expressionists and by 19th century realism. The theme of Sicily was a constant throughout his artistic life, as well as those of autobiography and historical-political opportunity.
In the period following the Second World War, Guttuso inspired the “Scilla School” which took shape on the Calabrian side of the Strait and brought about a fresh change of style in his painting. He arrived in Scilla in 1949 for his summer holidays. As the Scilla artist Giuseppe Marino recalls «Guttuso and Mazzullo were there with their respective wives, Mimise and Concetta. The Sicilian artist’s assistant, Saro Mirabella, also accompanied them. They all stayed together in a two-storey house right below the castle at Marina Grande. The upper room, with its magnificent sea-view, became the studio where Guttuso painted. The famous picture of boys collecting crabs, which won an important prize, was painted here».
Mazzullo continues, «Renato placed his easel with the canvases, his paint-box, brushes and portfolio near the window. Even though he stayed up late into the night, he would get up early to start work. To save time, he often didn’t bother shaving. His first pictures were of boats, cliffs and young people diving into the sea. Before starting to paint, Guttuso made drawings using Indian ink and coloured inks. He was so occupied with the landscape and changing colours of the sea that he rarely rested. People started visiting and asking to meet Guttuso: most of them were fishermen, with sunken faces split by the rays of the sun. We offered them wine and cigarettes, and this was enough to ensure there was no lack of models».
Thus were born the two famous cycles of Scilla paintings, between 1949 and 1950, in which Guttuso concentrated his attention on the metaphysical light of the Strait and showed his fascination for the intense Mediterranean colours – the colourful richness of the Uscita per la pesca (1950) being a good example. In line with the aesthetical “endeavour” supported by the “Fronte nuovo delle arti”, he drew upon nature, the daily activities of humble workers, subjects viewed in an epic dimension and not without traces of the classical tradition that had left tangible signs of its passage through these places referred to by Homer. Some of his best social realism works belong to the so-called “Scilla School”. The critic Giuseppe Marchiori, speaking about the painting Pesca del pesce spada (Fishing for swordfish, 1949), underlines that «imagination raises this episode from the level of everyday life to that of myth».
Indeed, Renato Guttuso returned to Scilla the next summer, giving rise to the secondo cycle. This time he took up residence in a house at Chianalea, overlooking the sea from his bright studio, with an unrivalled view onto the Costa Viola. That summer in Scilla Guttuso was surrounded by a large group of other artists, including Vincenzo Ciardo, Giovanni Omiccioli, Tono Zancanaro and Giuseppe Marino.
Renato Guttuso and the Scilla School
The Strait in ancient and modern paintings...
As well as being a famous geographical location with its own environmental microcosm and as a strategic passage between the Tyrrhenian and Ionian seas, the Strait of Messina has also become an authentic and significant artistic and literary tòpos, becoming fashionable again right through the twentieth century not only among writers and poets but also among painters.
A fairy-tale mediaeval view by an unknown 16th century miniaturist of the city of Messina in a half moon form around the characteristic sickle-shaped port fits well with the description made of the place by the Arab geographer Al-Idrisi: a fundamental stopping off point for vessels in the central Mediterranean along the route taken by expeditions heading for the Crusades in the Holy Land. One of the leading artists of the 15th century, Antonello, also depicts a mythicised Messina, his home town, in his paintings, such as in the Crocifissione di Sibiu (Crucifixion of Sibiu), in which the background landscape is dominated by the sickle-shaped harbour and the hills of the Peloritani coast almost as far as the furthest tip of Capo del Faro, the narrowest point of the channel between Sicily and Calabria.
After staying in Reggio and then Messina, the Flemish painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder immortalised the barbarian raid of 1552 in his beautiful drawings, later adapted countless times by other artists in engravings. In Landscape with the fall of Icarus, Bruegel takes his inspiration from the classical story by Ovid in the Metamorphoses and the imaginary view of the city of Messina is inserted perfectly into a mythical dimension.
Iconography of the Strait intensifies from the 17th century onwards and Abraham Casembrot is considered the initiator of the landscape genre in Messina, a genre that immediately caught on among art lovers and particularly among Flemish and Dutch collectors. Numerous artists, Italian and foreign, depicted the channel between Sicily and Calabria in their paintings, concentrating either on nature, the seafaring customs and traditions or the urban and geographical characteristics of the place.
Among contemporary painters who have depicted the landscape between Messina and Reggio it is worth mentioning Giulio D’Anna, who offers a unique image of the Strait transformed into a colourful dreamland in his futurist Fuochi d’artificio sullo Stretto (Fireworks over the Strait, 1929). Then we have the canvases by Renato Guttuso linked to the two cycles of the so-called “Scilla School”, from 1949 and 1950, in which the Sicilian painter rediscovers light and colours painting landscapes, fishermen and seascapes with a neorealistic vision. Guttuso adds a modern sensitive touch when perpetuating the myths of the Strait in works of great charm, such as La pesca del pesce spada (Fishing for swordfish, 1949).
Giuseppe Migneco, one of the members of the important 20th century “Corrente” movement, felt a strong tie to the Strait, to his birthplace, although he spent most of his adult life in Milan. In his paintings, halfway between expressionism and neorealism, Migneco often painted crab collectors, saury sellers, fishermen repairing nets in a characteristic and unmistakable style. The cobalt blue colour of the sea adds a touch of magic to Notte sullo Stretto (Night-time on the Strait, 1983), considered one of the most emblematic depictions of the environmental microcosm between Sicily and Calabria.
Landscapes of the Strait, from Antonello to Migneco (sv)
The oldest lighthouse in Italy on the Strait...
The “Lantern of San Raineri”, on the Strait of Messina, is considered by seafarers to be the lighthouse ‘par excellence’. The need to avoid shipwrecks in this stretch of sea, and to defend against incursions by pirates, prompted the Romans to build the first lighthouse in Italy.
The peninsula of San Raineri, where the sea is almost always choppy due to the currents, was the most suitable place for signalling on the Strait. Indeed, before taking the name if the famous hermit who used to light fires here at night to aid sailors, this site was known as “Lingua del Faro”.
The “Lantern of San Raineri” was used as an observation post to control shipping in the Strait and as a lighthouse, at night, to guide vessels that risked ending up on the rocks or sucked in by the whirlpools.
The 16th century structure, by Giovan Angelo da Montorsoli, is 42 metres high and was once called “Garofalo” because just nearby in the sea there was a whirlpool, which is still visible today.
The square tower has a scarp foundation, with an octagonal body on top containing the light itself. Nowadays, the light is lit automatically but for centuries previously there was a lighthouse keeper. From the top of the San Raineri Lighthouse you get one of the loveliest views across the Strait of Messina.
Inside, the tower is divided into three large rooms on top of one another, connected by a spiral staircase carved into the thick walls.
Montorsoli’s lighthouse is a solid military construction refined by prominent ashlaring enveloping the tower, and large embrasure-like windows. The 17th century bulwark around the tower emphasises the military appearance of the monument, which was part of the defensive system of the port of Messina.
The peninsula of San Raineri, which has a sickle shape forming a natural protection for the port of Messina, was fortified with impregnable military installations. On the site of the Basilian monastery of San Salvatore, a fort was built and is still a prominent characteristic in the panorama of the city.
Montorsoli, the lighthouse at San Ranieri (sv)
D’Arrigo, Guttuso and the myths of the Strait...
«For two years we have spent the summer with friends in a mythological town in deepest Calabria, Scilla, almost at the very tip of the Italian mainland overlooking the Strait of Messina. The sea around Scilla is adventurous, leading into the Strait and connecting with the Ionian. A sea with strange Atlantic fish that arrive here via Gibraltar. Here they catch deep sea fish such as "paddlefish" and swordfish, shoals of tuna, big enough to make the surface seem to be boiling, sometimes pass by, as do white ships carrying tourists and obscure coal ships (...) Although the sea is full of adventure, it does not offer much to fishermen and the swordfish season, which is the most important fishing in this area, is only just enough to allow fishermen to live a slightly less inhuman life (...) the rags of poverty stand out more clearly against the limpid air and in the dazzling light of the Strait. You cannot view this mythological landscape without linking it to the people who live here».
«Myths are shattered and what remains is this inexorable contrast in the dark, resigned, yet rebellious faces of the people. These people look just like mine, Sicilians, from fishing villages, farm labourers from the interior of Sicily and Calabria, just like oppressed people the world over. Living with them for a while and experiencing their problems is a great education for an artist. Meanwhile, "seaside places" are no longer of interest to us and can no longer offer us anything new. It is no longer necessary to head for south sea islands to seek purity of instinct. Here we have men and their struggles; and it is simply man’s struggles that the artists express, more or less explicitly, in their art».
Renato Guttuso, Richiamo di Scilla, in "Meridione, n. 1, May 1951
«[...] Scilla was discovered by Guttuso, Mirabella and Mazzullo, three Sicilians born in the provinces of Palermo, Catania and Messina. Guttuso won the “Premio La Spezia” with a picture painted in Scilla, Ragazzi che pescano granchi (Boys catching crabs). Guttuso painted a lot of pictures in Scilla. We have seen them. He “told the story” of Scilla using a marvellous, though possibly involuntary, mixture of Homer and Verga (perhaps, in the future, art historians will have to dedicate themselves to a “Scilla period” for Renato Guttuso). [...] This Scilla has a deep crystal-clear sea, a pebble beach on which shells and items from shipwrecks could be found. Such a beach could not be missing from the long travels of Ulysses, on which the gods left their capricious mark. Here, perhaps anxious to set foot on dry land, lie hidden some companions of Ulysses who had thrown themselves into the sea on hearing the singing of the mermaids that had pierced the wax in their ears, astutely placed there by the hero when undertaking the risky passage through the Strait; their eyes, however, still showed the disconcerting allure of the thirst for knowledge and of that frightening journey to obtain this knowledge. This disconcerting allure can still be seen today the narrow but desperate everyday adventure of these fishermen: in the eyes searching the horizon of the man acting as lookout at the top of the mast. It is no exaggeration to say that, for them, every day throughout the year, catching fish is their passage through the Pillars of Hercules, and for them knowledge is satisfying their hunger, the chance to fight that terrible monster. Guttuso, as I said, understood all of this».
«In the pictures painted in Scilla, these fishermen are descendants of Ulysses, sailing the open sea around Aci Trezza; fish, be it tuna or swordfish, holds the irresistible and mysterious fascination of the White Whale for them. This Scilla is young men like dried olives, Greek models who have endured centuries of fasting, silent and unsmiling young men, with grieving withered eyes; it is the women who wait, for decade after decade, for their men to return from the sea; [...] it is men like Giovanni, who, having caught a small dolphin, a fera, on his return to the beach shared it among the young people who know full well that the flesh of dolphins is revolting and smelly, that they furiously attack and tear fishermen’s nets, thus being dreaded, an ungrateful beast, fera. [...] Dolphins, these fere, have no soul: the fact that Giovanni, a fisherman from Scilla, and their sworn enemy, bestowed one upon them, demonstrates his sense of honour and his dignity, to which Guttuso bore witness in his paintings».
Stefano D’Arrigo, Delfini e Balena Bianca, in “Il Giornale di Sicilia”, 25 September 1949
The “Call of Sicily” with “Dolphins and White Whale” (vs)
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