Watercolours of Moreno dalla Vecchia

I love admiring paintings and sculptures. Among the different styles of paintings, my favourite is watercolours. This post is about a watercolour artist from Schio (VI), Moreno dalla Vecchia, who is also the president of the Schio's association of artists.

Recently I talked to Moreno during an exhibition of local artists held at Toaldi-Capra palace in the city centre.

Moreno's Artistic Evolution

Moreno loved art ever since he can remember. Seeing his artistic skills, his teachers suggested that he should study art. Thus, after completing middle school, in late 1960s he decided to join the art school in Padova. He studied there for five years.

He followed it for another 2-years' course for teaching art. However he decided to not to work as a teacher, instead he chose to work in public administration. Moreno retired four years ago from his public administration job. During his working life, being an artist was a parallel life for him. He feels that having a separate job allowed him to be more independent in his artistic evolution because he didn't need to earn from his art.

He has continued to learn and practice art ever since. For example, after completing art school, for about 10 years, he joined an art group in Vicenza called La Soffitta, created by Otello de Maria. Here, artists can meet, talk, and learn from each other. In this period, he experimented with oils, design and water-colours. He said, "Initially I was afraid of water-colours, I can't explain why but I was hesitant to try it. However, once I started to work with water-colours, I never stopped, I have continued to work with this medium." 

Moreno had started with oil paintings, and experimented with other techniques including acrylic, tempera, graffite and frescoes, before coming to water-colours. He has even taught oil painting and likes oil paintings.

Regarding his approach to water-colour painting, he said, "Now I am trying to get away from using photographs, to a slightly more real depiction of my subjects. I am thinking of this new approach but it is not yet very clear. Usually, when we paint we follow our mental images and not the reality of things as they are."

Artists' Association of Schio

Scledense Artists' group is about 50 years old. It did not even have a room and used to
meet in a bar. It is a space for meeting, talking and supporting each other. In June each year, the city and Scledense artists traditionally organise an open-air art exhibition called Sareo Art Festival. At the same time, they organise a thematic art competition for the primary and middle schools of Schio.

About the activities of their association, Moreno explained, "With time, other initiatives were added to Sareo festival, such as organisation of exhibitions in different city-spaces such as the Toaldi-Capra Palace. When Schio had the orchids and flowers exhibition, we also participated by having an exhibition on art about flowers. For example, the present exhibition has 5 artists from the city. Then, we have another initiative planned for Christmas and the end of year, which will focus on still-life."

There was a time when this group had 80 members, but now they are much less, around 30 persons and Moreno dalla Vecchia is its president. For him, it was important to be a part of this group since it kept alive his interest in art by getting new ideas, learning from others. He said, "We organised initiatives, we displayed our art, I also took part in some art competitions."

Art Courses in Schio

After completing his studies, Moreno came back to Schio, and he joined the Artists' group. One of his first initiative was to organise art courses. Together with another artist, Moreno organised an evening course for design and painting.

He said, "Around 15 persons came to the first course, sometimes they had no idea about art. The course lasted five evenings. Later on, I became the president of our association and started organising solo courses on water-colours. Some of my students have grown to become good artists. For example, Mari Baldissarotto, who is also a part of this exhibition, was one of my students, who has become a wonderful artist."

In Conclusion

Every time I meet persons like Moreno, who have cultivated a passion for all their lives alongside a 9-to-5 daily job, I feel a great admiration for them. There are so many others who say that they did not get time to do what they really wanted in their lives, because they had a full-time job.

I am sure that persons like Moreno, need to make sacrifices for keeping alive their passion. At the same time, their dedication to their passion means that their families get lesser time and attention. It would have been an interesting theme to discuss with him, however, I did not talk about it to Moreno. 

*****

Weaving Emotions & Relationships Through Photography

Anastasia Moro, known in art as A.MO., with the Metamorfosi Gallery Association in Vicenza, are part of an exhibition called Tessere La Storia (Weaving the History) being held at Spazio Shed in Schio (VI) from 4th till 20th October 2024.

A.MO. was a resident artist invited to Schio earlier this year, when she visited various places and interacted with people from the city. This exhibition is a result of that experience.

The Artist: Anastasia Moro

A.MO. studied at the art school in Padova and graduated from the Inst. of Fine Arts in Venice. She now has her art studio in Borgo Veneto near Montagnana (PD). She is interested in searching for ancient artistic traditions and experimenting with them. She has been experimenting with different materials and forms.

Her work for this exhibition is a continuation of something she had started in 2023, when she had used photographs of persons' faces by weaving and mixing them together to create  collage of relationships. These works were part of an exhibition called Sacre Relazioni (Sacred Relations), held in Vicenza the final quarter of 2023.

The exhibition in Schio, goes a step further by bringing in specific places, weaving and mixing them together and exploring their relationships.

Metamorfosi Gallery Association

It is a cultural association, born in 2011 with the idea of promoting the work of local artists active in visual arts and graphics, and organises exhibitions and events. They have been part of different interesting artistic events, mainly around Vicenza and Padova. You can check their webpage and their Facebook page for more information.

Tessere La Storia Exhibition in Schio (VI), Italy

Spazio Shed is an old wool factor, converted into a big exhibition space. A.MO.'s exhibition has a mix of some giant works and some smaller works. At the same time, it is also possible to see the works created for the exhibition held in Vicenza in 2023.

I loved the sensations and feeling evoked by A.MO.'s works. Bringing together of rectangular pieces of images to compose a bigger image, reminded me of Eva Trentin's works, but a deeper look showed that the similarity between the two artists is only superficial, they come from different directions and explore different spaces.

Anastasia explained that she weaves together and mixes two black-and-white
photographs till she gets the effect that she desires. To this mix, she sometimes add silver strips, so that they can reflect the viewers and make them a part of the relationship. Sometimes, the two photographs are of the same subject, may be from different angles, at other times she can bring together two different subjects.

During her Schio-residency, she stayed at San Francesco church building, thus this building and its surroundings appear in more than one of her art-works. Usually, she starts with an idea of the effect she wants to achieve in her mind and then experiments till she gets there. She does not use digital photo-manipulation in her works.

Among her art-works presented with this post, I especially love the ones related to Mother Bakhita monument and the one in the abandoned hall of Fabbrica Alta with the papier-meché heads created for the last carnival of Schio. 

In the End

I think that it is very interesting to have an artist in residence for creating site-specific art that links with specific sites and persons in the city and gives the residents a new vision and understanding of their familiar spaces.

I found Anastasia's art-works very striking during the exhibition because of their power to evoke strong sensations and emotions. At the same time, I like looking at their high-resolution pictures for micro-views of specific pieces to understand how light and darkness interact and stimulate deeper feelings.

After living in Schio for so many years, it is refreshing to see the familiar buildings, monuments and spaces in unexpected and unfamiliar ways.

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#photo_exhibition #installations #anastasiamoro #metamorfosi_gallery #schio_art

Portrait of an Artist: Mauro Marzari

Our little town has many public spaces for art and culture events. These continue to provide me with opportunities to discover new artists.

During a recent evening walk in the city centre, I came across the poster of an art exhibition by local artists at the Toaldi-Capra Palace and I immediately decided to take a look. Apart from some lovely watercolours, the exhibition had a few collages with mixed materials, which immediately caught my attention. All the exhibits were without titles or names of the artists. Thus, I went to ask information about the artist of the collages and discovered that he was present in the room. This is how I met Mauro Marzari, the "reluctant" artist of those collages.

This post presents my short conversation with him.

Artistic Journey of Mauro Marzari

Mauro is from Piovene Rocchette, a small town located some 7-8 km from Schio. Mauro has retired after a lifetime of working in public administration.

He explained that he was always interested in arts, and he dabbled in oil paintings. However, he decided to be sensible and look for a stable job, and not try to become an artist.

Many years later, when his family responsibilities were done, he decided to go back to his first love, the arts and joined a four years' degree course in arts at an evening course run by the Institute of Arts in Schio, while continuing to work full-time. The course gave him an opportunity to learn and experiment with different painting and sculpture techniques, and discover his own ideas about the kind of art he wanted to create.

The 5 works of Mauro, that I saw in the exhibition, all have a distinct style - they are collages with acrylics and paper. I liked all the 4 works and I think that I can look at them for long time and discover new details. My favourite is the canvass with a predominant blue colour (below).

Becoming an Artist

While talking to him, it came out that he does not feel that he can define himself as an artist, though he loves art and spends a lot of time making art. He feels that artists are persons who have dedicated their lives to the craft and have suffered all the hardships of the life for their art. About himself, he feels that he had a comfortable life and came to art when he was stable and did not have financial and family worries. Thus, he never suffered for his art.

This discussion reminded me of my feelings of being an imposter as an "Indian writer" at the Grinzane Awards in Turin in 2007, which had a focus on Indian writers and I had collaborated with them for inviting some Hindi writers. At that time, I had written a few stories and ran blogs in Hindi, English and Italian, but I did not have a book to my name and for me that was the criteria for being a writer. Now that I have completed my second novel, I feel more comfortable in being called a writer.

In the End

I loved Mauro's works. I hope that he can continue to find joy in his art and continue to develop and explore new areas as an artist.

In the end it does not matter the label we give ourselves or the labels others give us. In this era of attention-hungry influencers and publicity-peddlers, it is good to be humble and insecure, and enjoy what we do without feeling the need to show-off. 

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#arts #artists #schio #palazzotoaldicapra #schio_arts #mauro_marzini

Promoting Inclusion: Photo-Exhibition

Recently Toaldi-Capri palace in Schio had a photo-exhibition of two photographers, Tommaso and Filippo, organised by a local association working for persons with disabilities, called "Against Exclusion - Association ODV".

I visited this exhibition and had a brief talk with one of the photographers, Tommaso Frinzi. I want to share a few impressions from this experience. The images used in this post are all from the exhibition.

Against Exclusion - Association ODV

Let me start with a brief presentation of the organisation behind this initiative. It is based in Schio (VI) in the Veneto region in the north-east of Italy. It started in 1984, by individuals and families wishing to support social inclusion of persons with disabilities. Thus, this year they have completed 40 years.

 It is active in areas such as sports, leisure activities, independent living, leisure, and community-building.

Talking to Tommaso Frinzi

Thirty-three year old Tommaso lives in Magre area of Schio. He discovered his passion for photography about one year ago. Last Christmas, he received a Canon camera and since then, has been doing self-learning about photography through YouTube videos.

He met Filippo, his friend photographer at an event organised by the association and discovered that they both shared the same passion. 

Tommaso loves taking pictures of the nature, animals and birds. When asked to choose one favourite picture among his works, he chose the image of a seagull against the sky with clouds tinged orange by the setting sun. He explained this choice by saying that the flying seagull represents freedom and he likes the orange glow of the image.

He downloads his images on his computer and knows simple post-production, especially the software included in his camera.

Photographs in the Exhibition

I feel that often photographers feel intimidated to take pictures of persons with disabilities, because they are afraid of promoting stereotypes and of being accused of voyeurism.

However, Tommaso and Filippo, have a lot of pictures of other persons with disabilities while they are playing or talking to friends or enjoying themselves. You can feel that for them, these are pictures of their friends, living their lives like everyone else.

They are more unselfconscious in the way they depict disabilities and they are not aiming to give any specific social message or to create awareness about something. I think that this is the strength of their specific point-of-view in their images - letting us enter and see their world, the way they themselves see it. 

They have decided not to label the names of the two photographers on their images, so I am not sure who took which pictures. I can understand the reasons behind this choice, and yet I feel that this denies them the full satisfaction of being artists.

They are both artists, each with his own way of capturing the world through the camera, and saying this explicitly allows each of them to claim a specific space.

Conclusions

Finally, I like the idea of using arts and photography to create awareness about disability issues and persons with disabilities. I like it even more, when the artists and photographers themselves are persons with disabilities and their art expresses their own visions of the world.

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Art Exhibition - Visioni d'Arte

The art exhibition titled Marcopolo Travels - Visioni d'Arte was held at Palazzo Toaldi-Capra in Schio recently. It was curated and organised by Roberto Settin, who represents different artists and organises public exhibitions to sell their works.

This year is the 700th anniversary of the death of Italian merchant-traveller Marco Polo and thus different events have been organised in Italy on the theme of travel and journeys, especially in the Veneto region. It was also the theme of the art-exhibition of Visioni d'Arte.

Roberto Settin and his agency Visioni d'Arte

I had a brief talk with Roberto at the exhibition. He started this agency Visioni d'Arte in Bassano del Grappa during the shut-downs due to the Covid epidemic. He felt that he knew about the artists, the way the art markets work and has the international connections, so he can help artists to have viable strategies for selling their works.

To explain, how he can help artists, he gave the example of understanding the value of the art. He said that sometimes, new artists have unrealistic expectations about the kind of money they can get for their work and he helps them to have more realistic ideas. Often new artists can just manage to cover the cost of their materials and gain a small margin. Having their names and works in an exhibition-catalogue increases the value of their work over time.

To present their art-works in such an event, the artists need to contribute to the costs of organising the exhibition. For an exhibition in a small town like Schio, the costs are much less, compared to exhibitions in big towns like Venice or Milan. At the same time, small towns have lesser visitors and less sales.

Roberto is also an artist. He explained that the orange lion placed outside the exhibition hall was his creation. Roberto can be contacted through his Facebook page.

Art-Works in the Exhibition

The art-works in the exhibition were on different themes and many were not directly about travel, unless we think of travel as flights of fantasy and imagination. I want to briefly mention a few art-works from this exhibition, which I liked.

Let me start with 2 oil paintings using spatula - Rose in black and white by Annalisa Trento and In flight by Bianca Mengotti.

 

Marco Eracli, an artist based in Florence,  had 4 works in the exhibition, using acrylic with mixed techniques, that gives a wonderful texture to his work. Among all of them, I liked most the art-work titled Star-dust. Carlotta Castelletti also used acrylic but she used the wall-paper fabric for her striking work titled Madam.

Antonio Miatto does sculptures and collages. Among his works, I liked his collage titled "The Sea" and the wood-metal sculpture of the fish with a hole, titled "Without a heart". 

I liked the 3 oil-on-canvass paintings - 2 of them by Mara Zanchetta - "Freedom" with its red and black colour scheme and "Hair-curlers" with a feisty looking woman. The third one was "Hathor" by Monia Sansa.

The mixed material work by Cristiano Sandonà, uses some synthetic resin materials mixed with acrylic on glass - his work titled "For You" was simple and evocative. I also liked the mixed material work with wood and other recovered materials titled "Diversity is not the enemy" by Mattia Tegon.

Conclusions

I feel that art is very subjective, even more so, when the artists vary so much in their subjects, techniques and materials. Thus, deciding awards or who is the best, does not make sense to me.

Another aspect is liking some art-work at an intellectual level. It is another thing to decide which art-work I would like in my room, so that I can look at it daily.

From this point of view, I think that I would like the works of 3 women artists on my wall in my room - Bianca Mengotti, Carlotta Castelletti and Monia Sansa. At an intellectual and aesthetic level, I also like the works of Marco Eracli and Mara Zanchetta.

Among the art-works presented here, which ones do you like most? Write in the comments below.

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Art from the Fascism Era

The art and architecture are influenced by the dominating ideologies of their times. The rise of fascist ideologies in Italy during 1920s and 30s, had influenced the art and architecture from that period.

Recently, I had an opportunity to visit an exhibition on this theme at MART museum in Rovereto (Italy). The image below shows the sculpture of a man at the exhibition entrance.

In this post, I want to share about some exhibits from this exhibition. There were hundreds of art-works including paintings, sculptures, posters, photographs and models in this exhibition. For convenience, I have sub-divided a few examples of those in 3 groups - influence of fascism on the arts, representations of Mussolini and the end of fascism.

You can click on the images of this post for a bigger view.

Art from the Fascist Era or the Fascist Art?

Some artists believe in the ideology and thus, their creative expressions are aligned with the ideals of that era. Other artists may not believe in the ideology but can be forced to follow the dominant dictates of that ideology.

In the second group, sometimes, artists' dissent against the dominant ideology may be expressed in hidden symbols or clever subversions of ideas. The image below shows posters about fascism from 1920s & 30s.

Fascist Ideology & Its Artistic Influences

Fascism means glorification of masculine virtues - tall, broad, strong, powerful and patriotic alpha males with square jaws, leading their families, communities and the country, to compete against, fight and dominate the men from other communities and countries, for the glory of their fatherland.

Women play a supporting role in this process, they are supposed to reproduce children, look after their families and communities, and admire their handsome men. (The image below has a sculpture of the war veteran and fascist leader Carlo Delacroix by the sculptor Antonio G. Santagata in 1928)

I had no idea about the impact of fascist ideology on the arts and thus, I was very curious to visit this exhibition. My friend Giorgio loves art and when he proposed that we go to Rovereto to see it, I immediately agreed.

The term "Fascism" comes from Fascia or Fascio, a covering or a band. For example, fascias can be the cords tying together bundles of grain-stalks. For this reason, often paintings from that era show bundles of grain-stalks tied together by the fascia. This term expressed the strength of being united.  Image below has a painting from this exhibition, showing bundles of grain-stalks.

Evolution of Fascism in Italy

The ideas of "Revolutionary Fascism" were launched after the end of second world war by the 34 years old Benito Mussolini around 1917. Five years later, in 1922, the king of Italy appointed the 39 years old Mussolini as the prime minister.

In 1925, Giovanni Gentile, the philosopher and the ideologue of fascism, launched the Manifesto of Revolutionary Fascism at Palazzo Fava in Bologna (that building today hosts a medieval museum).

Initially, the fascist ideology developed as secular, but over the 1930s, Mussolini developed closer links with the Catholic church. During 1930s, Mussolini also became closer to Hitler and Nazism, and the racial segregation laws targeting the Jews were enacted in 1938.

In 1943, the arrival of British-American allied forces in south Italy led to German occupation of remaining Italy and the conclusion of the fascism. Partisans killed Giovanni Gentile in 1944 and Mussolini was lynched in April 1945.

With this introduction, now let me come to some examples of the exhibits.

Artworks in the Exhibition: Influence of Fascism on Art During 1920s and 1930s

Fascist ideals of women and children were expressed through creation of specific movements with their black costumes, songs and parades. For example, the children were organised in the Ballila groups for physical and moral education. Ceramic statues from 1930s from the ceramic factories of Nove-Bassano and the statues by Elena Konig, shown below, represent these.

Designs made by the artist Achille Funi during 1930s for making frescoes in official buildings also show the influence of fascism (image below). Funi is credited with the Novecento art movement during 1920s and for bringing back fresco mural-paintings into vogue.

Mario Sironi was another artist, part of the Novecento movement, who worked on fresco mural-paintings. The image below, shows his works "the horse-rider" from 1934, illustrating men and horses, another favourite theme of fascism.

Italian futurism art movement had started in early 20th century, before the first world war. During late 1920s and 1930s, a second futurism-art movement came around, which was heavily influenced by fascism. The two images below show some examples of this phase of futurism-art.

 

This was the biggest section of the exhibition.

Artworks in the Exhibition: Art About Benito Mussolini

Mussolini as the supreme leader of fascism, was often represented in paintings and sculpture. As an icon of fascism, these representations often showed him as fighter and warrior, with square jaws, frowning brows and a scowl or even injured in a fist fight. Below you can see some examples of these icons.

Artworks in the Exhibition: Art About the End of Fascism

In 1943, the arrival of allied forces in south Italy signalled the end of  fascism and artists could finally express themselves openly. For example, the 1943 painting by Mino Maccari shows the end awaiting Mussolini.

In 1945, at the end of the second world war, Benito Mussolini was lynched and angry mobs had brought down his statues and broken them. One such bust of Mussolini, which had been created by sculptor Adolf Wildt in 1923, and was broken with hammers by an angry mob in 1945, illustrates that time (image below).

India in the Exhibition

The fascism-art exhibition also had a 1942 painting by Italian artist Adalberto Libera titled "The Ataturk Monument in Ankara", shown in the image below. It has a column of fire in the middle and round walls all around with the Sanskrit words "Vande Matram" written in Roman alphabet.

Libera is known primarily as an architect. I don't think that the painting shows the Ataturk monument, rather it shows India's independence struggle against the British, which might have been seen positively by the fascist regime. I don't know if Libera had by mistake added the Sanskrit words to his Ataturk painting or if the exhibition organisers have mistaken the painting-title.

In Conclusion

This exhibition on art from the fascism era was curated by the well-known Italian art historian, critic and author Vittorio Sgarbi. He is known for his abusive and polemical TV-show persona and I don't like watching him, but I liked the way he has curated this exhibition.

At the end I am haunted by the broken statue of Mussolini. It reminded me of images of statues of Lenin and Saddam Hussein being brought down by mobs. In this sense, history keeps on repeating itself - sooner or later, the dictators and the strongmen become prisoners of their own images and are unable to confront the reality in time, to stop themselves from the final inevitable showdown.

Let me conclude this post with another image from this exhibition - a 1939 painting by Cesare Maggi titled "Listening to the Duce's radio broadcast".

I think that the above painting is about the declaration of Italy joining Germany in the war. Most persons in the painting look sombre and are dressed in black, the colour of the fascists. I am intrigued by the man in the red shirt standing in the centre, who has military medals pinned on his shirt. Was that red colour used by the artist to give a strong focal point in the painting or was it a sign towards the role played by Italian partisans in the war, who had fought against the Mussolini regime? The hill in the background seems like San Luca in Bologna, which had a large network of partisans.

May be Maggi, usually known as an artist close to the fascist regime, was actually trying to express his dissent through this painting?

Perhaps a similar argument can be made about some of the busts of Mussolini, which seem to caricature a strongman persona?

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Red Riding Hood Exhibition

Red Riding Hood is a familiar and much loved fable for children about a little girl and a big bad wolf. At the same time, it hints at the dangers of dangerous encounters for children. Recently I visited an exhibition about the little Red Riding Hood (Cappuccetto Rosso) in Schio (Vicenza, Italy).

This post talks about the life-long passion of two women, Paola & Ivana, about this fable, which led them to collect books, dolls, puppets and other rare objects on this theme from different parts of the world. At the same time, the post looks at how the story of this fable has evolved over the centuries.

The Little Red Riding Hood Exhibition

This exhibition was held at the historical Palazzo Toaldi Capra in Schio in April 2024. The exhibition poster was based on illustrations made by the high-school kids of Schio. Younger children had helped in preparing the red and black boxes used for displaying some of the exhibits.

The image below shows the illustrations by the students of Arturo Martini Arts School, which were used for making the poster.

The exhibition included a large number of books in different languages about Red Riding Hood, including books with paper-art and those with exquisite illustrations, some of them very old. Parents accompanying small children were encouraged to sit down and go through some of the books.

Children could also play with the dolls and the puppets including the glove-puppets. The special exhibits included the grand-mother's bed, a mobile wood-cut scene of the fable and, a special doll is which can transform the girl into the grandmother and then into a wolf.

People Behind the Exhibition (and the collection)

The collection used for the exhibition is the result of a life-long passion of two women, friends and neighbours, from Schio - Paola Gandini and Ivana Organo (image below).

I spoke to Paola about it. She said that Ivana had become her neighbour some forty years ago when, newly married, she had come to live next door. Both had developed this passion for collecting stuff related to Cappuccetto Rosso (literally "red hood" in Italian). Most of the stuff was bought from antiquarian markets.

Some years ago, they found that Emilia Romagna region in Italy had organised a book exhibition on this theme. Since they had so much more stuff about this theme, and not just books, they also decided to organise something. Their first exhibition one was in San Leguzzano, not very far from Schio, during their Museum Night event. Since then it has been organised in different towns, especially in collaboration with local civic libraries and schools. The present exhibition in Schio has been organised with the local Comune office, the Colore del Grano children's bookshop and the civic library, as a part of the Schio che Legge (Schio Reads) initiative.

Paola said that everytime it has been a different exhibition since they need to adapt to the space they get in each site. Their collection is very big and usually the space is limited, so they need to decide what to share. For example, in one of the exhibitions, they also had a tunnel representing wolf's tummy, in which children could enter.

For her, the exhibition object which is closest to her heart is a handmade book on this theme made for her by her daughter.

Fable of Red Riding Hood

Some panels in the exhibition illustrate how the fable changed and evolved during the centuries. According to the French researcher Paul Delarue, this story was known from older times and in many versions. In those earlier stories the girl did not have the red hood and showed courage in escaping from the wolf.

For example, in one version, she tells the wolf that she needs to pee and so the wolf ties a red-ribbon to her leg and allows her to go out. Once out, she opens the ribbon, ties it to a tree and runs away.

In the written version from 1697 called Le Petit Chaperon Rouge, by Charles Perrault in France, the story did not have a happy ending - in the end the wolf ate the girl.

The most well-known version is the one from 19th century by the Grimm brothers in which they had introduced the figure of the hunter (sometimes replaced by a wood-cutter) who kills the wolf in the end and saves the girl and her grandmother.

Fable As a Warning for Children

As parents we are faced with two opposite needs - the need to help our children grow up as friendly and open persons, who love and respect nature; and the need to protect them from the violence, especially sexual violence of predatory grown-ups.

The wolf in the story represents danger. The fable can be used to talk about inappropriate touch and dangers of grown-ups who approach and lure minors, and exploit them.

 At the same time, we also need to talk about wolfs in nature, who are an important part of our wild-life and who have been decimated in large parts of the world due to the expanding needs of humans and the diminishing forest-covers. The fable provides us with an opportunity to talk about this as well.

In the End

Paula asked me if I could bring for her a book on Red Riding Hood in an Indian language and I have promised her that I will look for it during my next visit to India. If any of my readers have a suggestion about this, do let me know.

She also said that her dream is to have a permanent location for setting up a Red Riding Hood museum in Schio, so that people from all over can come and visit it.

After visiting the exhibition I was thinking about how an unusual passion of 2 persons can lead to an important cultural meeting point for so many important issues like children's safety, wildlife and nature and at the same time, bring together the worlds of book writers, illustrators, doll makers, puppet makers, painters and so many other artists and artisans.

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