Fontana's cuts ... to health care. Street artwork posted at Milan's Covid Hospital.

It is not Lucio Fontana, in this case, who is applying a cut to the canvas, but it is another Fontana, Attilio, president of the Lombardy Region, who is cutting health care funding. This is the theme of street artist Cristina Donati Meyer ’s new work, which combines art and activism to expose Italy’s distortions. In this case, Donati Meyer has taken a famous photo from the 1960s that shows Lucio Fontana cutting a canvas: the artist has replaced it with Attilio Fontana, and the canvas has become the logo of the Region of Lombardy.

The work, a poster, was affixed to a wall near Covid 19 Hospital in Fiera (already closed), on Via Teodorico, near the entrance. Donati Meyer’s critique addresses the sum, 21 million euros, spent to treat 25 patients, and the fact that the hospital has already closed “with great waste of money donated by private individuals,” points out the artist, according to whom Lombardy has paid the highest price in Italy because of the pandemic partly due to the approach of health care of Lombardy, with continuous cuts to public hospitals and the closure of outpatient clinics in the territory (Donati Meyer also recalls that the Policlinico San Matteo in Pavia, governed by the region, is under investigation by the Court of Auditors for contracting serological tests directly to a company, and the judiciary is investigating the thousands of deaths in nursing homes for the elderly to see if there are links with the management of health care). Criticism also surrounds the supply of personal protective equipment contracted by the junta to a company owned by Fontana’s brother-in-law, with shares owned by the Lombard president’s own wife.

“Street art,” declares Donati Meyer, “must make its contribution to induce reflection. Lombardy’s regional leadership continues to absolve itself of unprovided and incompetent management of the Corona virus emergency, in the region most battered by Covid, where they govern private hospitals and clinics, paid with public funds. Fontana’s cuts were innovative, valuable and conceptual art. The cuts of Attilio Fontana and his predecessors to public health care have caused the tragedy we all know, especially to the detriment of the oldest, poorest and most frail people.”

Fontana's cuts ... to health care. Street artwork posted at Milan's Covid Hospital.

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