VAST. Since the last student left, closing the doors of the Paolucci middle school, numerous appeals have been made on social media for an important work to be preserved.
This is the wall painting with the name “Dante’s Ulysses”from Canto XXVI dell’Inferno, created by the painter Nicola D’Adamo, aka “Il d’AdAmo”, born in Vasto in 1939 but who divides his time between Rome, London, San Francisco and Vasto. That painting on the wall has since identified the building in via Madonna Dell’Asilo and since it was created it has remained in the memory of the many students who have come and gone through its classes and corridors since that year. But the school will soon be demolished and rebuilt thanks to a project financed with Pnrr funds and which will return a cutting-edge structure to the community.
And what will happen to “Ulysses” then?
The professor has been asking himself this since June of the last year of the institute’s “life”. Orlando Raspa, currently an artist and art teacher at the Paolucci school, and a former student of the same school in the 1970s, who jumped at the chance to return to admire it in the company of the same artist and friend who had created it. D’Adamo was on holiday in Vasto with his daughter Julie and the latter, a director by profession, shot a short documentary in which various anecdotes and secrets related to the work are told. Among these is the fact that the faces of the characters are those of some students of the time.
And that video was published two days ago close to the start of the works, to once again appeal for its conservation: “I hope that my various appeals and technical proposals for saving the work have found acceptance and feasibility among those employed in the sector. Keeping the painted monolith block intact, integrating it with the new structure as I initially proposed, in addition to keeping alive a noble element of a historic and glorious school that has remained in everyone’s hearts, also passes on to the new generations a cultural baggage of considerable value.
I thank Nicola D’Adamo, author of the work, for the full trust he placed in me and my ideas, and for accepting my video interview, where in front of his work, he tells anecdotes and curiosities that occurred during the execution . Therefore, all that remains is to wait for the imminent bulldozers and see in reality what the epilogue of the work will be.”
The Municipality let us know that the salvation of the work is foreseen in the economic framework of the project. However, there is still no clarity on how.
