Tutti in salvo

Iron, bronze, rope, Murano glass
Base diam. 400 cm
54th Art Exhibition “La Biennale di Venezia” Italy, 2011

“Especially in his tormented bronze sculptures, Antonio Nocera manages to express the drama of emigration with great effectiveness. For many emigrants the mirage of the “promised land” ends in the whirlpools of the ocean: we witness drama made of torn affections and feelings, lives in disarray and dreams broken in the most cruel way. As a historian of Italian emigration to the Americas and cultural director of the National Italian American Foundation, I feel the need to thank Antonio Nocera for dedicating several of his most significant works to the “Great Exodus”, the one that carried fourteen million of Italians across the Atlantic from 1880 to 1920, looking for a better life.”

Francesco Nicotra, Historian of Italian Emigration and Cultural Director of the National Italian American Foundation (NIAF)

“With this new artistic and editorial work by Maestro Antonio Nocera we want to retrace the adventurous and moving history of our grandparents, who left, despite everything, to seek their fortune, a hard and touching part of a sometimes forgotten past. A past that we cannot forget our roots, here in Italy.

A past that returns to the present with the tragic news of clandestine landings and, this time, of immigration stories, which very often, even today, unfortunately fill our days, making us relive the migratory experiences of our ancestors; paradoxes of modern man that have ancient roots in themes of economic backwardness, wars, social conflicts and delays in the development of the poorest countries.”

Nicola Mattoscio, President of the Pescarabruzzo Foundation

© Antonio Nocera – All rights reserved.