Contemporary Artisanship in Rome: Trompe L'Oeil

Artisanship is alive and well in Rome. We've found it in odd places (a luthier, a watch-band store, a glove shop - though some of those did not survive Covid). And, most recently, in our landlady for our San Lorenzo Airbnb. 

Licia Rossi (aka the landlady) is a wonderful artist, and also, with her partner, a purveyor of trompe l'oeil. We visited her San Giovanni studio and watched her at work.

Licia Rossi in her San Giovanni studio.

Her painting, which is her passion, has been exhibited widely. The trompe l'oeil, which we had not seen so pervasively in contemporary interiors, was equally intriguing.

Right, a design for a bedroom wall - and the painting for the wall design to the left of the photo of the bedroom.

Left, Licia's partner, Antonio Malleo, working on one of their wall paintings.

 

And here, a true tromp l'oeil from their Facebook site:

Another work we liked that shows off their "chromatic" approach (their Facebook and Instagram pages bear the word "cromaticamente"):

You can see more of their art - and Licia and Antonio at work - on their Facebook page, which will lead you into more photos on Instagram.

https://www.facebook.com/malleorossi/

Below this post, a few more photos, including the unassuming "street" in San Giovanni where Licia's studio is located.

Dianne

Licia with her sketches.

Visiting the studio.

C'era Una Volta: Once Upon a Time, there was a Tram

San Lorenzo is known for its wall art, and justly so, and most of it is where one would expect--on the exterior walls of the neighborhood's buildings. But one that caught our fancy is located not only inside, but inside a commercial establishment that's only been around a few years: C'era Una Volta [Once Upon a Time There Was...] Il Caffe--basically a bar like any other bar, serving coffee and sandwiches. On some evenings, men gather to watch a soccer game on a small TV. There's a place to bet on sports. 

C'era Una Volta is located at a critical intersection in San Lorenzo, where the historic via Tiburtina (San Lorenzo's "Main Street") and via dei Reti (the core of the area's transportation system) come together.

A grey day in San Lorenzo, looking straight up via dei Reti, with C'era Una Volta at right

The back room, usually open only for lunch, is a pizzeria/cafeteria, and on its back wall is that mural. "Once Upon a Time," the mural tell us--and it was only a few years ago at most--via dei Reti was a thorough for trams, though cars and trucks used it too. As far as we know, the only tram that ran on those lines--one in each direction, between Piazza Verano and Porta Maggiore--was the #19, right there in the mural. Until earlier this  year, several miles of the tracks used by the #19 tram were being repaired. The tram had been replaced by a bus--yes, the #19.

The mural (above) doesn't do justice to the bar's clientele. While C'era Una Volta has women customers, most of its patrons are men. Indeed, of the 5 or 6 tables on the sidewalk outside the bar, one or two are usually occupied by older men (or one older man), using the table as a space for social interaction, sometimes without any purchase. Just a place to hang out. 

Inside, too, most of the patrons are men

In contrast, the only patrons in the mural are women, and upper-class women at that, with fancy coats and vintage hats out of the 1930s. Their red lips--and the empty chair covered in red--are a nice touch, suggesting an elegance that the caffe', comfortable and efficient as it is, doesn't possess. On the sidewalk, a woman in more ordinary dress appears to roll up a sleeve, and another, behind her, seems to be picking something up. 

There's only one obvious male in the mural, and not a single student, or so it would seem, even though today's San Lorenzo is populated by, and enjoyed by, students from the nearby university. 

Prominently featured, although it hasn't been in operation for more than a year, is the #19 tram. 

Bill 

San Lorenzo is a fascinating neighborhood. Here are a couple prior posts featuring it.

San Lorenzo: Where Maria Montessori Got Her Start

The Mural on Scalo San Lorenzo: Reading the Politics of the Neighborhood

Rome's Public Markets: a Cautionary Tale

Cemetery wanderings - a great trek through Cimitero Verano in Rome

Sites of Anti-Fascism: Trionfale, Garbatella, and San Lorenzo

 

San Lorenzo: Where Maria Montessori Got Her Start

One of the surprises of the San Lorenzo neighborhood we inhabited this year is its discrete harboring of the birthplace of Maria Montessori's Casa dei bambini ("Children's house"), where she developed and put in practice her early childhood educational theories.

At right, the brightly polished brass door marker for Maria Montessori's first casa dei bambini.

San Lorenzo is an appropriate locale for Montessori's then-experimentation because it was one of the poorest and most degraded areas of Rome, home--at the turn of the last century--to the crowded and woefully underserved Italian working class. As we have noted in other posts, San Lorenzo, sometimes called the "most Roman of neighborhoods" outside the Roman walls, is almost an urban island, hemmed in by an enormous cemetery (Verano), multiple-track trainyards, and those ancient Roman walls. The end of the 19th century saw a building boom in Rome, but it was a boom insufficient to house the thousands of workers pouring into the city from the countryside. There was "deep social distress," explains one of the placards on the walls of the still-standing building that housed Montessori's first casa, resulting from illegal crowding and poverty. 

Left, the unassuming building at via dei Marsi 58, in San Lorenzo, where in 1907 the first casa moderna was built (there would be more than 400 within a couple years), part of an attempt to clear slums and provide "socialization." Today, not even this historical building is free from tags and other graffiti that mark the San Lorenzo area.

A senator and engineer, Edoardo Talamo, was put in charge of the new Istituto Romano dei Beni Stabili (The Roman Institute for Public Buildings might be a decent translation), established in 1904 to produce new buildings, case moderne ("modern houses"). And this unassuming building, at via dei Marsi 58, in San Lorenzo, was one of the first, with plans for it made as early as 1905. Talamo and his colleagues at the Institute wanted more than providing "a roof over the head of the neediest," as one description of the "modern houses" read. Jane Addams-like, they wanted "a social transformation of the inhabitants" through "common spaces with various advantages and facilities in each building." The children's space was a kind of early day-care for working parents (such as I attended in Seattle during the World War II years), with mothers helping to implement the plan. 

Right, an interior wall, with the first casa labeled, now with Maria Montessori's name.

In the early 1900s (after receiving multiple degrees that were highly unusual for women, including a medical doctorate), Montessori was a professor of pedagogy at Rome's La Sapienza university, working on her theories. Talamo engaged her to develop the "children's houses" within the "modern houses." She credits him with "the brilliant idea" (maybe the brilliant idea was hiring her) "of welcoming tenants--young children between 3 and 7--to gather in one room under the direction of a teacher who would live in the same building. Each building would have its own school." The Institute by 1907 owned more than 400 buildings in Rome, and so the project had great potential for development, an ideal incubator for the innovative Montessori.

The courtyard, left, where the children tended their own vegetable garden, one of the Montessori educational tasks. One of our friends recalls attending a Montessori school in the 1950s, but he didn't recall the place, only that "I barfed in the courtyard."

That first casa dei bambini is still there, almost 120 years later, in the building on via dei Marsi. It was turned over to the city of Rome in 1938, operated through World War II (the Fascists no doubt salivated over this ready-made educational plant), then was completely abandoned. It was reopened in 1966 by Associazione opera Montessori (Association of Montessori work). Under various organizations, the basic educational structure, with several schools, continues to this day. The casa dei bambini in San Lorenzo remains as a kind of in-place Montessori museum, that, along with the educational institution, "preserves the initial spirit and methodological tradition theorized" by her.

Dianne

Educational panels in Italian and English inside the building complex explain the casa, Montessori's role, and the specific layout.

Right, the memorial plaque from 2007, commemorating the centennial of the casa. It says (as I would translate it) it's the centenary of her birth, but it isn't. It's the centenary of the birth of her educational system. The plaque loftily states: "here, the first casa dei bambini was created January 6, 1907, initiating the rich and productive work of the great educator in service to infancy for the freedom of man."

Dreaming--ala Romana

 

Sognare: to dream. Sogno: a dream

Everyone dreams. But it's also possible that cultures dream differently, or think differently about what it means to "dream." More concretely--and based only on a few weeks of walking Rome's streets and reading the newspapers--it seems to us that the word "dream," and variations on it, is used more frequently in Rome than it would be in an American city and, arguably, that it's used differently.

One Sunday morning this year, looking for an open newsstand in the neighborhood of San Lorenzo, we came upon this piece of shutter art. "Who is keeping us from dreaming," it asks, as if the act of dreaming was somehow being frustrated, by someone, or some entity, or some condition.

In nearby Piazza dei Sanniti, where Pier Paolo Pasolini ate his last meal, the words "Balla, Sogna, Lotta"--Dance, Dream, Struggle--beneath an artwork by Sten and Lex, suggest something similar: not only the need to dream, but the difficulty of doing so in a world--and a society--that challenges the dream.

In this case, the dream is particularly intense because the message is affixed to one of San Lorenzo's most contested structures, a building that is a symbol of community, creativity, and social commitment and, during covid, a place where one could find food. Once the home of a movie theater, it was occupied by progressives in 2011, to prevent it from becoming a casino. A decade later, the authorities kicked everyone out. In this case, to "dream" means to hold onto the idea of what the building once was--maybe even hold onto the building--while opposing the plans of developers. A photo of the buildings in Piazza dei Sanniti is at the end of this post. 

"Dance, dream, struggle. Even now, in the cold. Look at us. I love flowers"

This last-minute addition, by way of "The King," was found in Ostiense: "Follow the dream, wherever it may take you."

The newspapers present different varieties of dreaming. A travel article describes the beaches of the Marche region as "un mare da sogno"--a sea to dream about. The Roma soccer club, having tied a crucial match only to lose on an "own goal," earns the headline: "Paredes fa sognare la Roma, poi la beffa" (Paredes [who had two goals, both on penalty kicks] allows Rome to dream, then the mockery)--again, the dream as frustration. 

And the "sogno" of having 24-hour Metro service in Rome, as cities in the United States do:

Just days before that Sunday morning, some 1400 people signed up to take the exam to fill 439 positions driving a bus. Among the applicants were women and many young people with Bachelor's degrees. "Molti sognano," reads the newspaper account, "di fare l'autista di bus" (many dream of being a bus driver). Maybe ironic--and maybe not. 

This window advertisement by BNL Bank appears to use a Bassett Hound [could be a Dachshund] (and a pun involving the word Bassotta [a combination of two words meaning low: basso and sotto]) to announce "low" rates that will help you achieve your Roman dreams:

And this bit of graffiti, on the wall of a prominent San Lorenzo park, fronting on via Tiburtina: "Solo sognare ci terra' svegli." Our Roman friend M., a skilled translator, helped us with this one: "Only dreaming will keep us awake." "The apparent contradiction" (between dreaming and waking), he noted, "makes me think of the necessity and constant effort of keeping dreams alive. And I guess here the writer was thinking of the great dreams of humankind, such as love, peace, and equality." 

Thanks so much, M., for your translation and thoughtful elaboration. Perfect.

Bill 

Nuovo Cinema Palazzo is at left. The restaurant frequented by Pasolini is at right. 

The Mural on Scalo San Lorenzo: Reading the Politics of the Neighborhood

 

Of San Lorenzo's many murals, none captures the community's history of in-your-face, leftist politics--at one time the product of the neighborhood's working class, now of a newer population of university students--than the street-level monster on Scalo San Lorenzo. The street can be dark and foreboding, having been victimized by a 1960-era elevated highway running down its center, but it was central to the area's development and character. To the south and east lie a maze of railroad tracks that at one time were crucial to the area's commercial development; Scalo, a word that defies precise definition, has some relationship to loading and unloading--it's likely related to the English word, "scale." 

About fifty feet long and accomplished mostly in grey tones, the mural is a complex political statement of the ideas that currently motivate San Lorenzo's residents, generally, and particularly those in the social space and organization that occupies the space at Scalo San Lorenzo, #33, behind the mural and was, apparently, responsible for it: COMMUNIA. Created a few years ago, COMMUNIA (see below the photo of the bus in the mural) is a feminist movement, mutual assistance organization, and a laboratory for experimenting with modes of production, and culture, that lie outside the marketplace. 

As a feminist movement, it works against workplace harassment (le molestie) and other injustices; the driver of the #19 bus (today, replacing the tram on via dei Reti while work is done on the tracks far away in Parioli, it is central to the area's transportation network) is a woman with fist raised (looking a bit like the Statue of Liberty), but it's noteworthy that the mural does not attack patriarchy or men in general. The section of the mural at right foregrounds the role of women and the community's need for green space and public services. I have not been able to figure out who L. Blissett was or is. 

[Nota bene: an anonymous reader explained that L. Blissett was Luther Blissett, a "multiple use name" shared by artists and activists in Europe and elsewhere since 1994. That is, there is no individual artist named Luther Blissett. He (named after a soccer player) is a community "myth" and a community project. For more--much more--see the entry "Luther Blissett" in Wikipedia, at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luther_Blissett_(pseudonym).]

Among the issues the mural raises are gentrification and the proliferation of Airbnbs that have raised rents and driven out residents, especially older ones ("poor people leave quietly," says the mural).

Increasingly, the area is unable to support traditional business; there is no classic Roman deli, no dedicated bakery (although there is one attached to a bar), only two orto-fruttas (fruits and vegetables) and one 72-year-old butcher with a very limited array of meats.

The source of the problem, the mural tells us, is money ("Rich Uncle" Pennybags, the figure from the game Monopoly) and developers, represented here by grotesque machinery, part metal/part skeletal animal. "Fight power not people," is the phrase on the front of the bus (photo showing bus, above). 

San Lorenzo values equality. OMNIA SUNT COMMUNIA, a well-known phrase from the Latin, translates as "all things are to be held in common." And it values inclusivity: "No Borders"/"A San Lorenzo Nessuno E' Un Straniero" [at San Lorenzo, no one is a stranger]. 

The mural also includes at least two aspects of the community's physical presence: the Sopra-Elevata (the elevated highway that runs down Scalo San Lorenzo) and the neighborhood's graffiti, represented here in the signature of GECO (high up on the mural) and the painter Hogre.

Bill 

 

The Art Scene of San Lorenzo: The Faces of Anna Laurini

 We first saw Anna Laurini's work--her woman, here, in two pasteups--on a phone booth on via Tiburtina in San Lorenzo, just a stone's throw from where the great consular road begins. A stylized woman's face, with a musical score as background. 

In the days and weeks ahead, as we walked the San Lorenzo neighborhood, well known for its radical, working-class, and student politics, its tolerance of any kind of graffiti or wall art, and its suffering from the 1944 American bombing, we saw more Laurinis, variations on the theme--some pasteups, some modest-size wall paintings, apparently accomplished some time ago. In one variation, the lips were not red, and the background was not a music score:

In another, older and painted, the lipstick conforms to the mouth, the eye is blue (and the pupil more pronounced), and the background is even-older wall graffiti:

This one seemed to be merging two, or three, faces. And the eyes (and hair) were purple.

One pasteup was in black and white, another was colored only in orange. Below, Laurini apparently used existing graffiti for the lip color. You can see there's a lot of competition for attention on San Lorenzo's walls. 

One painting was "framed," by the blue hair of two women facing each other. 

And this one, in pink and black, with the color of the pink lips "contained" but also emphasized by the surrounding pink, used drips to dramatic effect.

We couldn't resist the opening and vernissage, an event that was the norm pre-covid and now is much less common. It took place at the Proloco gallery at via Dei Latini 52, in San Lorenzo. We were immediately offered a glass of wine and joined the crowd, inside and outside the gallery (as is the custom--see photos at the end of this post). 

Usually we introduce ourselves to the artist, but this time we did not. We are quite sure she is the 2nd from the left in this photo:

And that this is her mother, shooting a video: 

A gallery flyer described Laurini as well known in the underground circuits of London, Paris, and Lisbon. It described Laurini's work as merging the "sophisticated" and the "simpler," and her style as both "rapid" and urban, "almost like an ideogram of the soul and identity." Her work "invites the viewer to reflect on the multiple identities that mix in the great cities." "The enigmatic faces painted by Anna Laurini act as mirrors of the soul, asking observers to look inside themselves to confront their own essence." 

I (Bill) was intrigued by the work, as this post reveals. I think I was taken by its simplicity of color and form, by the ways in which the basic model could be differentiated, and by what I saw as the presence of Pablo Picasso, here employed by an artist generations removed. I don't think it helped me look inside myself in search of my essence, but that would have been a lot to ask. 

Bill 

Buon vernissage!

Rome's Public Markets: a Cautionary Tale

Rome's neighborhoods remain vibrant communities in most respects, in part because the big box stores and malls that have damaged American cities are generally located far on the city's outskirts. Yet we have noticed that one element of the traditional Roman neighborhood appears to be in trouble: the neighborhood's central market. 

Our first recognition of the problem emerged in San Lorenzo, where it was clear that the central market, and the local, traditional system of food distribution, was in difficulty. Roughly half that market had been replaced by tables and chairs for drinkers (mostly) and diners of nearby restaurants and bars. And the half that remained was only partially populated. Only one butcher--a 72 year old man--continues to practice the craft in San Lorenzo. We talked to him, and he bemoaned the fate of his trade. He had very few offerings compared to butcher shops we've seen in other neighborhoods. He clearly saw himself as the "last butcher in San Lorenzo." And we counted only two fresh fruit and vegetables shops in the area. 

More than half of San Lorenzo's public market is now tables and chairs--or empty.

Friends tell us that the new indoor market in Testaccio is also troubled--more cafés and bars than traditional market offerings. The newish Trionfale market appears to be suffering too, Several years ago, the outdoor/shed market at Quarto Miglio was transformed into a children's playground and a center for street art.

The Quarto Miglio market, on a Saturday, at noon, in 2019. Only one stand was open.

An elaborate program of street art had failed to revive the Quarto Miglio market

Something similar is happening more slowly in the area around Piazza Bologna, where the large indoor public market on via Catania has been serving the community for decades. The market is located in a densely populated area--apartment buildings of up to 10 stories--that ought to be capable of supporting even a large public market. 

 At first glance the market looks healthy. 

But there are empty stalls.

We decided to do a survey. We walked the market, Dianne counting the total number of stores and stalls, Bill counting the number of empty stores and stalls. It was 10:30 in the morning, when one would expect the market to be in full swing.

Dianne's results: 148 stores and stalls

Bill's results: 49 stores and stalls closed (roughly 1/3)

Unfortunately, it's likely that the story of the via Catania market--a story of decline--is being repeated across the city. Chain grocery stores, with expanded hours, are proliferating.  Many of the daily (and mostly women) shoppers that once had their mornings free to shop at the market are now working. Young Romans are getting married at an average age of 32--and then having few children, or none at all. Fewer households having regular meals, fewer families and fewer family members to shop for. And, of course, the supermarkets have taken business away from the public markets. The future looks grim.

Bill 

For other posts on public markets, of the many references on this blog, see the following:

On Testaccio's "new" market: https://www.romethesecondtime.com/2012/08/testaccios-new-market-rst-weighs-in.html

On our favorite public market: https://www.romethesecondtime.com/2010/02/rst-top-40-26-best-market-in-romepiazza.html