Here's Jorit's new mural: a 213-square-meter Gramsci at Florence's housing projects

Street artist Jorit (Ciro Cerullo; Naples, 1990) has returned to Florence two years after his last work, the mural dedicated to Nelson Mandela in Piazza Leopoldo, to execute a new work, a large portrait of Antonio Gramsci, on the façade of a public housing building at number 25/22 Via Canova, in the Isolotto district, a total of 213 square meters in area. The building was provided by the City of Florence and Casa spa. As is his style, Jorit began the preliminary phase of the mural by tracing a sentence on the entire wall, in this case well-known Gramscian reflections from Letters from Prison: “Even when all is or seems lost, one must quietly set to work again, starting from the beginning... The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old dies and the new cannot be born.”

The initiative is promoted by the Puccini Theater Association, as part of the project Odio gli indifferenti, which borrows its title from a writing by Gramsci that first appeared in 1917 in the magazine La Città Futura. And the words with which in that article Gramsci rails against abulia and disengagement (“I hate the indifferent. I believe that living means being partisan. Those who truly live cannot but be citizens and partisans”) will be present at the construction site set up for the work. The reflections developed by Gramsci during his imprisonment (as is well known, he was imprisoned by the fascist regime between 1926 and 1937), collected in the Prison Notebooks, have inspired liberation parties and movements around the world over the years in the search for paths of progress for the working classes less dependent on Soviet communist dogmatism. Among these was also the Italian Communist Party, of which Gramsci was among the founders, in January 1921, and which also in Gramsci’s sign characterized the season defined as “Eurocommunism” that preceded by a few years the final dissolution of the party. 1921 will also mark the 130th anniversary of Antonio Gramsci’s birth.

Together with the Teatro Puccini cultrual association, the City of Florence’s Department of Sport, Youth Policy, City of Night, Third Sector, Immigration, Fight Against Loneliness, District 4 of the City of Florence and Casa spa are collaborating to support the project. Official suppliers are Ariete srl, CBF Impianti, Dante Maggesi srl, Euro Impianti, Fiorentina Costruzioni srl, Kelm Costruzioni, Minuto Gioacchino srl, Nuova Ergo Impianti. We thank Betti Rent and CAF scrl for their support.

“This project was born while the Mandela mural was being made,” says Luca Talluri, president of Casa Spa. “We decided to depict Antonio Gramsci, because he was a man who through his thought, his life and his example represented a point of reference against abuse and injustice, always standing on the side of the weakest. So here then, at a time like the present, when we need figures who can guide us, this mural represents a symbol of light, all the more so on a building of public housing, set within a deeply popular neighborhood.”

“At this time,” says Councillor for Youth Policy Cosimo Guccione, “it is even more relevant to enhance and regenerate the living spaces of Florence, where citizens are called to stay to cope with the pandemic. And with this artistic initiative, therefore, we want to make the presence of institutions, city cultural realities and internationally renowned artists all united in conveying Gramsci’s message against indifference and for a community that is supportive, participatory and sensitive to the hardship we are all experiencing.”

“Taking art out of museums, taking it among the people to share with as many people as possible important messages like this one against indifference,” stresses Housing Councillor Benedetta Albanese. “We continue with the winning combination of popular housing street-art and thanks to the murals we bring entire neighborhoods closer to art, enriching them and transforming them as a whole into true outdoor works of art.”

“We are happy,” says Mirko Dormentoni, president of District 4 of the Municipality of Florence, “to host on our territory the work of an exceptional artist who represents one of the most important intellectuals in the history of twentieth-century political thought, a classic that as such is still very topical. A message of beauty and culture that we need, at this time perhaps more than ever.”

“Even though Antonio Gramsci is remembered as the founder of the Italian Communist Party,” says Cristina Noferi, president of the Teatro Puccini cultural association, “he remains one of the few historical Italian intellectual figures studied around the world for his philosophical thinking about politics. We want to remember him as a political philosopher, historian, intellectual, journalist of humble origins who left Sardinia winning a scholarship to arrive in Turin where he graduated and began his life as a journalist. I want to recall a thought of his that greatly impressed me in which he argued that every human being was an intellectual, but there were those who did it for a living. Exiled, arrested, in poor health, he spent his whole life in search of the truth, and the Puccini Theater I represent is proud to be part of the Hate the Indifferent project.”

Pictured: the mural dedicated to Gramsci during the final stages of processing. Ph. Credit Marco Borrelli

Here's Jorit's new mural: a 213-square-meter Gramsci at Florence's housing projects

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