2009-11-19

The murals of Orgosolo in Sardinia

If you’re holidaying on the Eastern coast of Sardinia, take the opportunity to venture inland to the village of Orgosolo for an interesting alternative view of this rocky island. In Orgosolo, the murals that you frequently see on the sides of houses and shops in Sardinia have started to take over and the whole village has become an outdoor gallery of street-art.

In fact the sleepy mountain village has become a tourist attraction in its own right purely because of the murals that people come to see and photograph. This part of Sardinia has a history of banditry and protest against the central government and the themes of war, poverty and hunger are expressed in many of the murals. Some of the locals who owned shops and bars were benefiting from the money spent by visitors on drinks and souvenirs, but I got the feeling that some of the locals might wish that their village was left alone.

One of the main artists is Francesco del Casino who was a teacher at the Orgosolo High school for 20 years, and you can see the influence of Picasso and the cubist movement in his work. The mural painting started in the 1970s when teachers and students at the local high school decided to create outdoor posters to commemorate liberation and the Resistance movement. From posters the work moved on to murals with many of the works were created and supervised by Francesco Del Casino while he was an art teacher at the school.