Reggio Emilia Local Monuments |
| 1) WWI Memorial |
Year of creation: 1985
Artist: Graziano Pompili
Monumental sculpture with an headstone and a plate. This sculpture represents a demolished giant. The broken bits of the giant’s body, made in stone, delimit whole the perimeter of figurative space. This monument is made up of blocks of chalk mixt with marble. The giant’s grandeur is almost distorted by its supine position, and by its broken body parts. The face of the giant is on the ground. There’s a plate, next to the monument with one of Brecht’s poems written with iron letters.
In the adjacent space, near the monument there’s a marble headstone of white marble with all the names of the soldiers dead in the Ist World War and an epigraph.
Description of the plate: The Giant Dejected/Now we need to see/and not to look in the air/it’s necessary to act/and not to speak/this monster once/was about to dominate the world/the people stopped him/but the womb from which it was born/is still fertilize/Bertold Brecht
Description of the Headstone:
San Polo d’Enza to the fallen of the resistance.
40th liberation anniversary April 25th 1945
Association that promoved the realization: Town Administration of San Polo and ANPI (National Association Italian Partisans) and the Associazione nazionale caduti e dispersi in guerra
Territorial and urbanistic context: Even today the most rappresentative architectural nucleus is the Castle. The XVI century tower is still whale. Still visible is the big portal, that in the middle ages served for the entry of transports, and another small one for the pedestrians. We can see the big fissures in which the chains of drawbridge were inserted.
Just in front of the ancient fortress, now center of the administration of S. Polo, there is the parish church of the Castle.
The motivation of the initiative: This monument underlines the defeat of the dictatorship during the war, but also the transience of peace. The poem by Brecht underlines this too. Another main point is also the headstone with the names of the soldiers and partisans of the second world war.
Who is Bertold Brecht? Brecht was Born on august in 1898, writer, poet, playwright and German theatrical director.
For the originality of the approach with which he faced predominantly social themes , he’s considered one of the most innovative authors of the contemporary dramaturgy.
Who is Graziano Pompili? Graziano Pompili was born in Fiume on 1943; three years after his family transferred to Faenza - here Pompili had received his first artistic education, learning above all the use of the baked clay and ceramics to the Institute of Art. Among the most recent personal exibitions we remember: Galerie Les Cyclades, Antibes, 1996; "The time great sculptor", Gallery of art Niccoli, Parma; Tour Fromage, Aosta, 1997; Gallery Art Borgogna, Milano,1998; Landaus Bauer, Francoforte, 1999; Galerie Norbert Erbert, Darmstadt; the Artists' Circle, Faenza, 2000; Stanza delle Colonne, Commune of Nonantola, 2001; Palazzo Farnese, Cotignola (Ravenna), Fortress of the Commune of San Martino in Rio; Alte Kelter, Muhlacker, 2002.
The mytological figure of the GIANT: “…The “Giants”, primordial creatures, children of the Titaniums, even if they were allied with the gods they had a terrible and destructive nature. Zeus shooting down many Giants with his lightnings. But they had not been all defeated. Having set two mountains–the Ossa and the Pelio behind the Olimpo, the giants climbed the sky until almost to graze it. But Zeus helped by all the gods of the Olimpo and from Ercole, succeeded in throwing back down them, saving the gods from an invasion…” . Mythology distinguishes three stocks of giants. The children of Uranus and Cheerful (the Sky and the Earth), that belong to the first divine generation of the Giants; the Ciclopis builders and the Sicilian Ciclopis companions of Polifemo, of which Humerus narrates born by Neptune and by Anfitrite. The first generation died in the battle with the gods. The Constructor ciclopis had 50 heads each and 100 hands and so was called Ecatonchiri. The Seconds, them young brothers, were giant with an only eye in the middle of the forehead. Their aspect was so monstrous that them father, disgusted, had hid them in the viscus of the Earth. These last ones are the craftsmen of the lightning of Zeus, for this motive incurred in the anger of Apollo, whose child Asclepio - god of the medicine - had resuscitated some corpses and had been therefore struck by lightning of Zeus. They are also the blacksmiths of the gods, under the direction of Efesto god of the fire, to which furnishes the weapons. They live in Sicily and Eolies, in underground caverns where the hits of their anvils and theirs pant makes grumble the volcanos of the zone, while the fire of their forge reddens the top of the Etna. Humerus describes them wild and gigantic, provided only of an eye to the center of the forehead, and endowed with immoderate strength. It puts them in the Fields Flegrei, near Naples, where they raise rams not disdaining cannibalism
