Pino La Barbera

Vicolo del fornaio

Name: Vicolo del fornaio
SKU: 6651
Price: 700.00 EUR
Availability: InStock

Paintings Straw threads

Single artwork

€700,00

Description by the artist

This is an alley in the small village of Vicari, inland of Palermo. A typical Sicilian alley with small houses leaning against each other, stone stairs and the smell of food coming out of the windows and in this case also from a bakery. I come from Castronovo, inland Sicily and I grew up with the colors of grain: from the green mountains of spring to the golden yellow ocean of summer. And from the ears of grain I invented my art. Artwork made with straw threads (grain and oats). Unique technique in the world. Straw threads glued on light blue or blue cardboard, background made by hand in watercolor. The shading and depths are made using the same straw with lighter and darker shades and gradations.

Details and dimensions

Materials: Straw threads

Dimensions (cm): Height 40, Width 30

Weight (kg): 1.300

Handcrafted in Sicily

The artwork in the Sicilian culture

By the Governance of Sicilian Artisan Foundation

241 BC, Sicily was conquered by the Romans who replaced the Greeks by making Zeus, Jupiter, and so on for the other gods of Olympus. For Catone the Censor the island was “the granary of Rome“. Sicily alone exported about 3 million quintals per year to the capital. Even today, especially the center of the island, is an endless expanse of grain, as if it were sea, which makes it particularly characteristic landscape: deep green in winter and spring, and blinding yellow in the summer months.

Vicari is a small village of about 2000 inhabitants in the province of Palermo, founded around the 800. There is a Cuba (probable cistern for the collection of water) of Arabic origin (XI century) and ruins of a castle whose origins are lost to about 2000 years ago.

(photo) Sicilian carts in the nearby of Palermo, 1920

Paints with straw threads

Pino La Barbera

“Art is for me is the expression of ones inner self. Many people do not know that they have potential within them and therefore do not manifest their knowledge and their attitudes. It’s a pity"

The Governance also suggests

The objective of the Governance is both to safeguard the traditions and ancient crafts of the people of Sicily, and to sustain economically the Artisans and the Artists, both the real ethno-anthropologists of the country.