Murals of Orgosolo

From 1903 to 1917 there was a bloody family feud (disamistade) in Orgosolo. According to tradition, the trigger was the dispute over the inheritance of the richest Orgolese, Diego Moro, who died in 1903. The feud divided the population into two hostile halves and in these years more than 50 people fell victim to the blood feud. After reconciliation seemed to have been achieved through trials in 1917, the disamistade broke out again after about 30 years. The threat of blood revenge, but also the occupation by the Carabinieri and the arbitrary arrests of the “mainland” authorities once again drove men to hide in the mountains and thus often become bandits. They were usually assured of support from the village population against the hated carabinieri. Orgosolo was declared a “bandits’ nest”. “The headquarters of the outlaws, where people suck in hatred with their mother’s milk” was written in Italian newspapers.

The very first of the murals, called Murales, was drawn in 1968 by the anarchist Milanese group Dioniso in Orgosolo. After seeing the film Banditi a Orgosolo, Francesco del Casino, a drawing teacher from Siena who was close to the Italian Communist Party, settled in Orgosolo and in 1975 began painting pictures on the walls of houses with students in Orgosolo. The occasion was the 30th anniversary of the partisan struggle against fascism. However, the paintings began in Sardinia in the relatively unknown village of San Sperate. The murals in Orgosolo initially expressed protest against the planned NATO troop training area on the Pratobello. The protest is also directed against the heads of the Milan group, who embezzled funds from the development plan for Sardinia. Recent portraits comment z. B. World politics - Helmut Schmidt is called an "expert in state murder" because of Stammheim, a victory of the Cambodian and Vietnamese fighters against the USA on April 25, 1978 is celebrated and the number of innocent victims for the fall of Saddam Hussein is questioned. Other images depict the simple life of shepherds and villagers, advocate the preservation of the Sardinian language or even contain advertising messages. An ironic Murales also makes fun of Alfredo Niceforo's studies on crime in Sardinia (see history). Many of the approximately 120 murals are stylistically based on cubism in the manner of Picasso's Guernica, but there are also more realistic paintings among them. In addition to Francesco del Casino, the self-taught artist Pasquale Buesca, who also lives in Orgosolo, the artists' group "Le Api" and the Milanese artist Massimo Cantoni were responsible for the murals. Despite some damage, for example due to the conversion of houses or the weather, all of the murals are largely in very good condition.

In the resistance against the numerous conquerors of Sardinia, a bandit culture was formed, which also became the subject of criminological studies in the 19th century. Alfredo Niceforo, a follower of Cesare Lombroso, created the myth in his book Crime in Sardinia that Sardinians were predestined for crime.