In the footsteps of Sol LeWitt ...

San Domenico changes his clothes

We are in Camerana Villa in prov. of Cuneo and precisely in the hamlet of Castagnetti where, along a small country road, suddenly a small chapel appears to our eyes that the inspiration and, let us say it, a bit of crazy provocation, has transformed into a luminous play of colors and hidden meanings. It all comes from the meeting between the fractionists and Carlo Massobrio, architect and teacher of art, who loves, when the painting rooms are opened, to immerse himself in the role of artist / decorator; it was a matter of paying homage to a local craftsman, Luigi Gallo who died in 2005 who, accompanied by great passion and love for his land, had created, by himself, the chapel in question dedicating it to San Domenico.

The chapel, in exposed reinforced concrete, stands on a small clearing along the road, dominates the valley below and over the years has become a point of reference for the fractionists of the area.

For the decoration of the external walls, the architect Massobrio, following in the footsteps of the great American artist Sol LeWitt, let the colors come to life, freeing themselves in curvilinear and floral motifs without a precise guiding thread but guided only by his eyes and his boyish enthusiasm.

The color, always aggressive, joyful, happy, gives the whole the aspect and accent of a fairy tale, it wants to enchant, amaze by entering into symbiosis with the flat calm of the surrounding landscape.

Massobrio wanted to contrast the immobility and coldness of the material of the structure by invading the colored and unpainted space with dynamic overlaps, so that vitalism, understood as joie de vivre, asserts itself with a playful spirit in the eyes of the observer.

In changing clothes in San Domenico we wanted to contrast the gray iconographic image that we conventionally have of the churches that, seriously and all the same, accompany our rural walks because as Kandinsky said ...