Thursday 26 April 2012

Art and Tradition /Carretti Siciliani





I couldn't miss showing you one of our traditional Sicilian cart artists.  Tommaso Provenzano  worked on one of his smaller pieces for the whole 10 days we were at the exhibition, willingly talking and explaining his work to visitors.



These traditional carts are now used for display and events such as weddings, a full size decorated cart can cost up to 10,000 euros.  The whole thing is hand carved in wood and then passed on to the artist.  Tommaso uses acrylics to paint every single part, inside the wheels, underneath the cart....not one inch is left untouched.



Most of the scenes painted are from Sicilian folklore and history featuring red, blue and yellow (the colours of the Sicilian flag).  Originally brought over by the ancient greeks, the carts showed pictorial history to those who were illiterate, becoming popular in the 1800's..  The craft has been handed down generation after generation and there were three such artists in our exhibition all local.  



Tommaso has a web site www.tommasoprovenzano.net

13 comments:

Dan Kent said...

Wow. Beautiful. Thank you.

Jennifer Barnes said...

Amazing art!

Judy said...

Beautiful!

Shirley said...

What a work of art - and treasure. Thanks so much for showing it to us.

martinepittet said...

Original and impressive !

Unknown said...

Simply amazing!
Thank you for showing us Cathy.
Think I'll have a quick look at his website.
Stew.
stewcrowther.wordpress.com
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nanke's stuff said...

This is spectacularly beautiful and I would so love to see it "in person". Thanks so much for sharing it with us! nancy

Studio at the Farm said...

Cathy, thank you so much for introducing us to Tommaso's exquisite work.

Anonymous said...

What amazing work!!

kazumiwannabe said...

Very interesting! Neat to see how the drawings in the cart are meant to teach history to people, and not only look nice!

Alena said...

Thanks for showing it! It's great what he does :)

Timaree said...

I've enjoyed painting folkart pieces myself. Nothing like this though. It is sure fun to see such fancy pieces.. I'm glad it is still being done.

Cindy D. said...

Wow, I can't even imagine the patience involved! But wow, worth every moment!