The association is preparing the 39th edition of the mountain literature award. A project to enhance the heritage of documents kept by the Foundation
TREVISO. Who knows if today Giuseppe Mazzotti it would embrace the cause of Greta Thunberg and the young people around the world who are on strike to denounce the climate emergency. Certainly he would not have been looking at the environmental and landscape destruction against which he already thundered fifty years ago. Prophet and forerunner of great battles such as the one in defense of the mountain, of our sweet hilly landscape, of the Venetian Villas that he was photographing to denounce their deterioration. Mazzotti’s this year are the 40 years after his death on March 28, 1981. Unfortunately, the health emergency does not allow public celebrations.
The event for water
The association Giuseppe Mazzotti Literary Prize does not give up, announces that edition 39 it will be done even if online and in autumn it will propose an event dedicated to Water, the blue gold of our days. Last February he involved young people in the presentation of the volume “Land last call” happened in streaming from Tipoteca Antiga of Cornuda: the proceedings of a conference promoted in Asiago to measure the pulse of our planet, in a line of continuity with the thought of the great scholar, journalist, art critic, mountaineer, food and wine lover of life.
Born in Treviso on 18 March 1907 to a father from Romagna and a mother from Treviso, Mazzotti was the protagonist between the two wars of that wonderful adventure of art and poetry in the renamed Treviso “Little Athens” by Dino Buzzati, who frequented the trattoria alla Colonna together with Arturo Martini, Gino Rossi, Giovanni Comisso.
Mazzotti was many things besides embodying the official role of director of the provincial agency for tourism and it was well described in 1972 by Gastone Favero in the Rai television program “An hour with Bepi Mazzotti”. In a nutshell: an anticipator.
The Mazzotti Award Association is today committed to rediscover its relevance and spread its thought, the stubbornness, the actions in defense of the territory of which he was able to understand the uniqueness like few others. The battle for the Venetian villas, of which he is identified as the “savior”, is certainly the one that most of all summarizes his talents, celebrated by Oro Vergani on March 8, 1958, in the article “The Robinson of the Venetian villas”. His “battles of civilization” were married by a group of friends – Adriano Zanotto, Toni Benetton, Cino Boccazzi, Giovan Battista Ceriana, Ugo Fabris, Alessandro Meccoli, Giovanni Vicentini – from the “Amici di Comisso” Association, from the Municipality of San Polo di Piave and the Italian Touring Club, which in November 1982 formed a Promoting Committee establishing the Gambrinus Giuseppe Mazzotti Award for mountain literature, exploration and ecology, officially presented on May 16, 1983 at the Circolo della Stampa in Milan.
Over the years he has managed to intercept works capable of activating important debates: among these “Patagonia Express” by Luis Sepulveda, “Landscape Constitution Cemento” by Salvatore Settis (2012 edition), “Green brilliant” by Stefano Mancuso and Alessandra Viola (2014). Also noteworthy are the characters of the Honoris Causa Prize: from Don Luigi Ciotti to Kuki Gallmann, from Renato Cevese to Giulia Maria Crespi up to Brunello Cucinelli.
The Upper Room
Once a year the closing ceremony at the Gambinus Park in San Polo di Piave recreates the atmosphere of cenacle of talents and thanks to the Prize, “little Athens” has become a virtual city in which interesting ideas and developments converge.
«Giuseppe Mazzotti left an important legacy that we cannot let die» recalls the president of the Roberto De Martin Award, convinced that the commitment must be focused on the youngest. Hence the project “Contemporary Mazzotti” launched in collaboration with Cai, Fai, Touring Club and materialized in the conference “Never again the environment made fun of” by Asiago and then in the book “Terra. Last call ”by Salvatore Giannella.
Among the initiatives the identification of “Mazzotti’s lampadieri”A sort of torchbearers who take over the baton. Meteorologist Luca Mercalli was among the first “heirs” to be awarded. Furthermore, from 2020, the Giuseppe Mazzotti Juniores Award for high school students has taken on a national dimension by developing a new graphic design, conceived by Nicola Ferrarese, co-director of Treviso Comic Book Festival.
Important news should arrive in the coming days from another front, that of Mazzotti Foundation. Most of the books have been transferred to a shed in Caerano San Marco, the historical archive remains in via Marchesan for consultation, pending completion.extension of the Zanzotto library to the former Gil. —
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