On Filicudi, the World Stopped in the Sixties

Lucio Fontana 1899-1968, Argentina Follow +

In 1971, when the Italian government exiled its worst mafiosi to live on Filicudi, the islanders—mainly fishermen—built barricades across their homes and staged all-night vigils in protest. Mafia boss Giovanni Bonventre and his clan were similarly disapproving of its suitability, seeing little in the way of business opportunities on the small volcanic island off the northeast coast of Sicily.

Eventually, the islanders’ efforts prevailed, an extraordinary pride that was captured by photographer Ornella Tondini. Taken on Filicudi in 1978, these poignant black and white images currently hang in La Sirena, a restaurant in the old fishing village of Pecorini a Mare on the southern edge of the island.

It’s here on the restaurant’s colourful terrace, a few steps from the sea, that I’ve come to meet its owner, Sergio Casoli, the Italian gallerist who bought the restaurant and five-room hotel with artist Maurizio Cattelan back in 2010.

Casoli leans back on a purple chair dressed in a sun-bleached shirt, shorts, and flip-flops. Colourful talavera tiles line the floor of the restaurant, which is set out for lunch. A chalkboard notes today’s special, polpo alla griglia (grilled octopus) dressed in Casoli’s home-pressed olive oil. Above the bar, a shelf of limoncello and grappa bottles is framed by a series of sailing-boat illustrations by Scottish artist Peter Doig.

Casoli’s life has always centred around art. Born above his father’s frame shop in Milan [in 1954], he went on to set up his first gallery, Studio Casoli, in 1985, in a studio that had once belonged to Lucio Fontana. Two further galleries—one in Rome and another in Milan—followed, where he staged exhibitions of Italian greats, like Fontana and Alighiero Boetti, alongside international heavyweights including Nan Goldin. After 9/11, he closed all his spaces and moved to Filicudi for two years.

In 2022, Casoli relaunched his eponymous gallery in a whitewashed seafront structure, just along from La Sirena. Standing under its canopied entrance, you can admire the fishing boats dotting the bay.

Studio Casoli hosts three consecutive exhibitions over the summer months. The gallery’s debut was the late Italian photographer Giovanni Gastel, followed by paintings by Doig, two artists who have spent summer holidays walking the island’s cactus-covered crags and fishing its deep clear waters. This summer draws to a close with It was, Now (20 August–10 September 2024), an exhibition of paintings by Italian artist Seboo Migone.

However, it’s Fontana and the 2023 show of 34 ceramic works—a number of which came from his renowned series ‘Concetti Spaziali’ (1947–68)—that the gallerist really enthuses over.

‘He was the most important artist of the 20th century,’ says Casoli. ‘At night here in Filicudi, I look at the sky and see the universe. I have always needed to perceive my 190cm height in relation to the space around me—some might consider it unnecessary, but it was helpful to me. Today, with the understanding that the spatial metaverse is the hole, I no longer need that support ... This is what Fontana created and showed us [with ‘Concetti Spaziali’] from the late 1940s.’

This appreciation of Fontana, however, was slightly overlooked by Jeff Bezos when he happened upon the show while sailing around the Aeolian Islands last summer. The Amazon founder had anchored his 127-metre sailing yacht Koru off the shores of Pecorini for a spot of lunch at La Sirena and some respite from the 45-degree heatwave.

‘Is it always this hot?’ Bezos had asked Casoli who—realising the opportunity in this chance meeting—was now leading Bezos, his girlfriend Lauren Sánchez, and two bodyguards to his air-conditioned, albeit not-yet-fully-installed, exhibition.

While Bezos didn’t immediately connect the series of punctured ceramics with Fontana’s work, clues to the artist’s identity were prompted by Sánchez, who reminded the budding collector that they had, in fact, two canvases by the artist hanging in their kitchen.

Encounters such as these paint a rather glamorous picture of the island. However, for now, Filicudi seems a far cry from the starched tablecloths and Aperol fanfare that holidaymakers have become accustomed to on the neighbouring island of Panarea.

In the winter months, when Jeff and I are not here, a mere 50 people live on the island. In the village of Pecorini a Mare, you’ll find a single fisherman. The young protagonists of Tondini’s black and white photographs from 1978 are still very much part of the fabric of island life.

‘You see that youngster looking like a pirate,’ says Casoli, pointing at one particularly large portrait of a shirtless boy scaling a rock. ‘He’s the guy standing over there by the bar.’ Nearby hangs a photograph of a bull watching a young boy fill up a pail of water. It’s Stefanino, now in his 60s, who we’d met earlier renting out small fishing boats on the jetty.

The menu at La Sirena centres on what the nets pulled up that morning, while the spaghetti for your vongole and the pistachio for your cannoli arrive once a week in two food vans, via ferry, from Sicily. The electrician who installed Fontana’s show sailed over from the mainland. There’s one pharmacy by the port and no ATM.

‘Here, the world stopped in the 1960s,’ Casoli says. ‘And it’s a perfect kind of world.’ —[O]

Selected Artworks

Main image: Filicudi, Italy. Photo: Studio Casoli.