SHARE
COPY LINK

MAFIA

Art-loving mafia mobster’s collection in Italy show

The prized art collection of a mafia boss, confiscated by Italian police, has gone on show in Calabria in an exhibition billed as a "victory of the state" over organized crime.

Art-loving mafia mobster's collection in Italy show
Two paintings by Spanish great Salvador Dali (pictured) feature in the collection. Photo: Carl Van Vechten/Wikicommons

Two paintings by Spanish great Salvador Dali feature in the collection of 125 works seized from mob businessman Gioacchino Campolo, dubbed the “King of Videopoker” after he built up a vast fortune by running tampered slot machines.

“Today we can say the state has won,” Eduardo Lamberti Castronuovo, culture and legality assessor in Reggio Calabria, told AFP.

“From shadow to light,” inaugurated on Saturday at the city's imposing Palace of Culture, a 1920s converted orphanage, features Dali's “Fuente de Vida” and “Giulietta e Romeo” as well as works by naivist artist Antonio Ligabue and Arte Povera painter Lucio Fontana.

The paintings were seized in 2010 from Campolo, who was accused of helping fund the powerful 'Ndrangheta organised crime group in his native Calabria and was found guilty in 2011 of criminal association, usury and extortion.

The 77-year old, who is wheelchair-bound, is serving his 16-year jail sentence under house arrest due to his age and health.

'Tears and blood'

“He had €320 million ($365 million) in assets. He owned houses in Paris, Rome and throughout Reggio Calabria,” Lamberti Castronuovo said.

The 'Ndrangheta – whose name comes from the Greek for courage – is described by Italian police as the most active, richest and most powerful crime syndicate in Europe.

With a turnover of billions of euros a year, it is particularly notorious for drug trafficking and corrupt construction contracts.

Campolo was the business frontman for the powerful De Stefano mafia family – several members of which featured on Italy's list of most-wanted fugitives – and he built up his collection as a way to launder the proceeds from his slot-machine empire.

Not all turned out to be good investments: 22 of the paintings were discovered to be forgeries.

But the “ethical value” of the paintings is greater than their economic worth, Lamberti Castronuovo said.

The haul was “taken from people who take everything from us. What we confiscate is not put under lock and key, as it was by them, but made available to people for the common good.

“That's what we call taking action against the mafia!” he said.

Reggio Calabria mayor Giuseppe Falcomata said the exhibition meant “giving back to the people works of art which are no longer the fruit of tears and blood, but are a collective patrimony”.

'Social re-use'

After decades of fighting Cosa Nostra in Sicily, the Camorra in Naples and the 'Ndrangheta in Calabria, the Italian state has a large portfolio of confiscated assets, including some 3,000 businesses, 12,000 buildings and over €2 billion in frozen funds.

For the last decade or so Italy has been working to return the assets to the public arena though a “social re-use” programme.

The country's courts have been confiscating goods tainted by mafia association since 1982, under an anti-mafia law.

The law was named in part after the bill's author, Pio La Torre, who was assassinated before it could be voted in.

La Torre was gunned down by the deadly Corleonesi clan allegedly on the direct orders of infamous bosses “Toto” Riina and Bernardo Provenzano, dubbed “the tractor” for the way he mowed his victims down.

Seizing goods is one of the most powerful weapons used to prevent mobsters from continuing to run their businesses behind bars.

And it can bring great benefits to the rest of society, from farms and restaurants transformed into social co-operatives, to this show.

“In collecting these paintings, (Campolo) was working for us,” Lamberti Castronuovo said.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

ART

African-born director’s new vision for Berlin cultural magnet

One of the rare African-born figures to head a German cultural institution, Bonaventure Ndikung is aiming to highlight post-colonial multiculturalism at a Berlin arts centre with its roots in Western hegemony.

African-born director's new vision for Berlin cultural magnet

The “Haus der Kulturen der Welt” (House of World Cultures), or HKW, was built by the Americans in 1956 during the Cold War for propaganda purposes, at a time when Germany was still divided.

New director Ndikung said it had been located “strategically” so that people on the other side of the Berlin Wall, in the then-communist East, could see it.

This was “representing freedom” but “from the Western perspective”, the 46-year-old told AFP.

Now Ndikung, born in Cameroon before coming to study in Germany 26 years ago, wants to transform it into a place filled with “different cultures of the world”.

The centre, by the river Spree, is known locally as the “pregnant oyster” due to its sweeping, curved roof. It does not have its own collections but is home to exhibition rooms and a 1,000-seat auditorium.

It reopened in June after renovations, and Ndikung’s first project “Quilombismo” fits in with his aims of expanding the centre’s offerings.

The exhibition takes its name from the Brazilian term “Quilombo”, referring to the communities formed in the 17th century by African slaves, who fled to remote parts of the South American country.

Throughout the summer, there will also be performances, concerts, films, discussions and an exhibition of contemporary art from post-colonial societies across Africa, the Americas, Asia and Oceania.

‘Rethink the space’

“We have been trying to… rethink the space. We invited artists to paint walls… even the floor,” Ndikung said.

And part of the “Quilombismo” exhibition can be found glued to the floor -African braids laced together, a symbol of liberation for black people, which was created by Zimbabwean artist Nontsikelelo Mutiti.

According to Ndikung, African slaves on plantations sometimes plaited their hair in certain ways as a kind of coded message to those seeking to escape, showing them which direction to head.

READ ALSO: Germany hands back looted artefacts to Nigeria

His quest for aestheticism is reflected in his appearance: with a colourful suit and headgear, as well as huge rings on his fingers, he rarely goes unnoticed.

During his interview with AFP, Ndikung was wearing a green scarf and cap, a blue-ish jacket and big, sky-blue shoes.

With a doctorate in medical biology, he used to work as an engineer before devoting himself to art.

In 2010, he founded the Savvy Gallery in Berlin, bringing together art from the West and elsewhere, and in 2017 was one of the curators of Documenta, a prestigious contemporary art event in the German city of Kassel.

Convinced of the belief that history “has been written by a particular type of people, mostly white and men,” Ndikung has had all the rooms in the HKW renamed after women.

These are figures who have “done something important in the advancement of the world” but were “erased” from history, he added. Among them is Frenchwoman Paulette Nardal, born in Martinique in 1896.

She helped inspire the creation of the “negritude” movement, which aimed to develop black literary consciousness, and was the first black woman to study at the Sorbonne in Paris.

Reassessing history

Ndikung’s appointment at the HKW comes as awareness grows in Germany about its colonial past, which has long been overshadowed by the atrocities committed during the era of Adolf Hitler’s Nazis.

Berlin has in recent years started returning looted objects to African countries which it occupied in the early 20th century — Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Namibia and Cameroon.

“It’s long overdue,” said Ndikung.

He was born in Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde, into an anglophone family.

The country is majority francophone but also home to an anglophone minority and has faced deadly unrest in English-speaking areas, where armed insurgents are fighting to establish an independent homeland.

One of his dreams is to open a museum in Cameroon “bringing together historical and contemporary objects” from different countries, he said.

He would love to locate it in Bamenda, the capital of Cameroon’s restive Northwest region.

“But there is a war in Bamenda, so I can’t,” he says.

SHOW COMMENTS