L’affection of the Italians (actually maybe it’s really love) towards Paolo Rossi you can see it on walls across the entire country, from Veneto at the Sicily. Three years after the death of soccer player which made Italy dream first at the 1978 World Cup and then win the 1982 World Cup, there are many murals surveyed around the various regions. In Argentinawhere sports street art is more rooted in time, there is no province today where there isn’t a mural on Maradona (and by now Messi it’s close to him). Diego, whose death in 2020 occurred a few days earlier than that of Pablitois well represented in Italy but hardly leaves the country borders Campania. Rossi, who wore the shirts of AsVicenza, PerugiaJuventus, Milan and Verona, is a shared heritage for never having identified too much with a club and for having given his all with the blue shirt in the main competition for Nationals (he was summoned by Bearzot also in 1986 in Mexicobut it went badly).
A Vicenza – cities, suburbs and neighboring municipalities – you can find dozens of stencils (one mask normografica which allows you to reproduce the same shapes, symbols or letters in series) with his face. There Venetian city it is where Paolo established himself as a Serie A footballer in the second half of the seventies, conquering the national team and becoming for everyone Pablito. After stopping playing Rossi will continue to live here for many years. Vicenza is theepicenter of this street art-based love. To the Saves there is a beautiful work by the artist Osvaldo Casanova, an aluminum print on a stadium wall. At the City Hotel Cristina in Corso SS. Felice e Fortunato is there playing a Rossi in bicycle at the time of Lanerossi. The volunteers of the non-profit organization Energia e Sorrisi have embellished their headquarters Altavilla Vicentina with a mural depicting Paolo Rossi in a red and white shirt. President Giampietro Dal Ben claims that the work, 6 meters high by 4.5 meters wide, is currently the largest representation ever painted of the footballer, here with the sweater red and white. At the “Paolo Rossi” municipal stadium in Altavilla Vicentina there are two more murals, one in the Vicenza shirt and one in the blue one. Cobra, famous Brazilian artist, could break the record for size in 2024. Vicenza or near Torino? This is not yet decided, but the project exists.
Paolo Rossi and the 1982 World Cup: it is the mural created in Bucinein the province of Arezzo, by the artist Chekos’Art. Remaining in Tuscany, where Pablito was born, there is a mural at Serravalle, created forty years after the World Cup in Spain. The work of the Pistoian artist Vegan is located in the green area “The cat and the fox”. “Pablito is the king of the World Cup! The masterpiece created by Rossi: 6 goals!”, is written next to the drawing, quoting the headline of a newspaper of the time. Even in an ice cream shop Prato there is a work dedicated to the former Italy center forward. TO A barker (Pisa) the Paduan Diego Testolin he created an artist’s shutter with the face of our Ballon d’Or. Collective mural at the Milan hippodrome, created in 2015: all the heroes of 1982 are there. Doe (Catanzaro) seven murals for as many characters painted by Leonardo Cannistra, artist from Fossato Serralta. Paolino is obviously there. Just as he is present in the wall of fence of the sports field Burgio, Agrigento. And in Foggia, two hundred square meters of a popular building in the center, near Via Da Zara.
Examples can also be found abroad. Leonardo Chiavarolifrom Abruzzo and a Sampdoria fan, moved to Valencia where he opened a pizzeria with his wife in Calle Bajas 20, that house number now has the font of the blue shirt of world. Furthermore, he had local artist Lanena paint two murals, one dedicated to Pablito and one to Vialli. The pizzeria is in the street of murals in one of the European capitals of street art. Some swear they’ve seen one in France. By its very definition of public art, the census is partial, given that at this moment some young artist or some boy with the ambition of becoming one could be spontaneously working on a new work of art. There street art italiana he made his debut in a political decade like that of the Seventies. Then starting from the beginning of the nineties the phenomenon expanded. Sport as a theme has only arrived a few years ago. Paolo Rossi it is unique. A football hero who died young and loved throughout Italy. “There has been a certain delay at a sporting level, I think due to the fact that the original Street Art was closely linked to the dimension of politics and sport was perceived in an ‘other’ dimension. But the gap is closing – he tells us ilfattoquotidiano.it the professor Edoardo Di Mauro – About a year ago there Turin Marathon commissioned by the Albertina Academy, of which I was director and now deputy director with responsibility for public art projects, a large mural work at the headquarters of the Cascina Marchesa in the Pellerina Park. A few months ago the Real Mutuasponsor of the basketball team of Torino, of which I am a long-time fan, had a work of strong impact created on its headquarters. Many works have been created by football curves. I know well those of the team I am a fan of, Bologna, which has a notable impact, as well as those of the rival team Modena. The Lecce collective Chekos Art he has created numerous large-scale works linked to the team from that city, which has recently come back into vogue. I would also mention artistic playgrounds like the one created by the artist Davide Barco in viale Lazio, and outside Italy the many in the city of New York”.
Di Mauro he’s not surprised that much about what’s going on with Pablito. “Paolo Rossi is a symbol of sporting Italy that unites and does not divide, contrary to the great Maradonawho is a controversial personality and exclusive heritage of Naples, to which he has inextricably linked his image, which has risen to the level of myth. Paolo Rossi is the emblem of the latest triumph of National, that of the 1982 World Cup in Spain, experienced as a collective moment of popular exaltation, before football mercantilism made the Azzurri lose part of the aura they had. The early death of Paolo Rossi has certainly and rightly amplified the will to celebrate it.”