Giovanni Bosco learnt about life through the harsh reality of shepherding in 1950s Sicily. He spent two years in prison after stealing some sheep, and while confined away from the island he learnt by chance that two of his younger brothers had been assassinated. As a result, he suffered a nervous breakdown and was admitted to a psychiatric hospital, where he was probably subjected to electroshock therapy. Drawing and painting thus became a totalising and inescapable occupation for him. His murals can be still found on the main streets of Castellammare del Golfo.
Discover moreSciacca
Giovanni Cammarata was a bricklayer who during the Second World War ended up in a British internment camp, first on the coast of Turkey and then in Gaza. Whilst there, he managed to obtain the favours of his captors by building amazing castles of clay. After returning to Sicily in 1947, he settled with his wife in a poor industrial neighbourhood at the periphery of Messina. In the following years, he transformed his decrepit home in a palace of dreams and phantasy. Only poorly conserved portions of the façade and the adjacent courtyard now remain of the house.
After a tragic event, Isravele—how he is known in his second life—decided to become a hermit. He thus left his family and went to live on top of one of the mountains that surround Palermo, occupying an empty building that he has transformed into a sanctuary dedicated to angels. Israel belongs to the great tradition of “builders of the imaginary”, spontaneous architects of their soul’s house. Israel has created suggestive decorations with mosaic and paint on all the walls of the building.
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Filippo Bentivegna was into a family of peasants and fishermen, Bentivegna emigrated to the United States between 1912 and 1913. He came back in 1919 after suffering a head injury following an aggression for unknown reasons. After buying some land at the base of Mount Cronio near Sciacca, he created his “magical castle” by sculpting hundreds of stone heads painted with pink stucco in semicircles, or amassed in pyramids, for the rest of his life.
Gilda Domenica worked as a dressmaker for a lifetime. Today she is 77 years old, she lives alone in a small house in Caltagirone, where he began a new life. almost without realizing it, she has become an artist. For several years she realizes clothes, bags and shoes that are beginning to be considered a veritable artistic expression. Gilda did not stop here. Once implemented, Gilda wearing her creations and parades through the city of Caltagirone. It is a veritable artistic performance she does unknowingly.
Discover morePalermo
After a tragic event, Isravele—how he is known in his second life—decided to become a hermit. He thus left his family and went to live on top of one of the mountains that surround Palermo, occupying an empty building that he has transformed into a sanctuary dedicated to angels. Israel belongs to the great tradition of “builders of the imaginary”, spontaneous architects of their soul’s house. Israel has created suggestive decorations with mosaic and paint on all the walls of the building.
Giovanni Cammarata was a bricklayer who during the Second World War ended up in a British internment camp, first on the coast of Turkey and then in Gaza. Whilst there, he managed to obtain the favours of his captors by building amazing castles of clay. After returning to Sicily in 1947, he settled with his wife in a poor industrial neighbourhood at the periphery of Messina. In the following years, he transformed his decrepit home in a palace of dreams and phantasy. Only poorly conserved portions of the façade and the adjacent courtyard now remain of the house.
Discover moreCaltagirone
Gilda Domenica worked as a dressmaker for a lifetime. Today she is 77 years old, she lives alone in a small house in Caltagirone, where he began a new life. almost without realizing it, she has become an artist. For several years she realizes clothes, bags and shoes that are beginning to be considered a veritable artistic expression. Gilda did not stop here. Once implemented, Gilda wearing her creations and parades through the city of Caltagirone. It is a veritable artistic performance she does unknowingly.
Filippo Bentivegna was into a family of peasants and fishermen, Bentivegna emigrated to the United States between 1912 and 1913. He came back in 1919 after suffering a head injury following an aggression for unknown reasons. After buying some land at the base of Mount Cronio near Sciacca, he created his “magical castle” by sculpting hundreds of stone heads painted with pink stucco in semicircles, or amassed in pyramids, for the rest of his life.
Discover moreCastellammare del golfo
Giovanni Bosco learnt about life through the harsh reality of shepherding in 1950s Sicily. He spent two years in prison after stealing some sheep, and while confined away from the island he learnt by chance that two of his younger brothers had been assassinated. As a result, he suffered a nervous breakdown and was admitted to a psychiatric hospital, where he was probably subjected to electroshock therapy. Drawing and painting thus became a totalising and inescapable occupation for him. His murals can be still found on the main streets of Castellammare del Golfo.
The term Outsider Art is used to indicate spontaneous and original works of art produced outside the established cultural and art scenes by solitary and eccentric authors, who live at the margins of society either by chance or by choice. It is a distinctive phenomenon of Sicily’s culture, where premodern elements, such as the residual peasant one, live side by side to the postmodern condition, without dissolving into it. It is an unresolved issue. The life histories of these Sicilian outsiders tell of events of uprooting, migration and return, of belonging and its opposite, of a real and subversive fusion between life and art. The impossibility of integration in foreign contexts, and the imbalances of modernization, are possibly behind these spontaneous creations that compose a map of surprising genius loci on the island, no less authentic or significant than those of the official art world. The sites of this outsider art are the open environment, collections and museums, the homes of artists. These sites are found in various parts of Sicily (Palermo, Castellammare, Sciacca, Caltagirone, Messina…). The spontaneous expression of self-taught artists becomes the focus of an itinerant journey that traces the route of Sicily’s outsider art. It will be a journey that will touch all the corners of island, sometimes in completely unexpected ways.
Ruggero Di Maggio, director and producer for documentaries. Graduate in History of cinema at University La Sapienza Rome and in Documentary film direction at ESEC Paris.
Gabriele Gismondi, author, director and editor for promotional videos, reportages and documentaries for Web and TV. Graduated in Audiovisual Techniques at the DAMS (University of Bologna), coauthor of Palermo Documentary Festival (2007) of Palermo, under the patronage of the Province of Palermo. Editor and screenwriter for "The Green Ray" (national campaign for organ donation, 1st prize "Franca Pellini" for Best National Organ Donation spot). From 2006 to 2013 worked as director and editor for audiovideo productions, institutional films for organizations such as Institute of Vine and Wine, Mediterranean Institute for Transplantation and Advanced Specialized Therapies, Sicily Transplant Center, Fondazione Teatro Massimo, Palermo Teatro Festival, Set Associated Artists, Sicilian Theatrical Circuit, Mon Amour Film, LED Engeneers, Municipality of Palermo. At present (2013) author and director of short documentaries series for the web and TV: "Sicily unveiled", "Palermo unveiled", "Lampedusa day by day". Collaboration with RUPTLY TV GmbH (Germany), Compass Light (USA), Play your Tuscany (Fondazione Sistema Toscana) and Sicily lapse (Italy).
Web: www.gabrielegismondi.com
Mail: gabrielegismondi@gmail.com
Tel: +39 347 6465020
CLAC is a cultural enterprise established in 2003 in Palermo. Its aims are the design, organisation, promotion and production of cultural and artistic projects. The idea and motivation behind it are the result of the need to improve the island’s quality of life and the desire to open creative and cultural spaces. This is done by working in an honest and professional manner with local authorities and those enterprises that are interested in supporting cultural activities. For this reason, CLAC considers cultural production as the capacity to operate at different levels and on different, intersecting planes, valuing the complexity of projects and the multiplicity of competencies. CLAC believes that professionalism, respect for the common good, and creativity in the cultural world are the basis of the possible development of the Sicilian territory. We work at the intersection of cultural production, activism and social innovation. We are involved in projects that support a diffused entrepreneurship in the socio-cultural context, in networks that debate and analyse contemporary forms of work, in projects that revalue heritage, in co-participatory activities.
