Description
Tuttomondo is a large mural by Keith Haring on the wall of the rectory of the church of Sant'Antonio Abate in Pisa, near the station. It measures about 180 square meters, ten meters high by eighteen wide: thirty colorful figures fitted together.
Haring painted it in June 1989 in a few days, with the help of students and craftsmen. It is his last public work before he died, in 1990, and the only one meant to last. The title, chosen by him, is in Italian: a rarity among his works.
It all began with a meeting in New York. Haring met a Florentine student, Piergiorgio Castellani, who invited him to Tuscany. In Pisa he felt like painting a wall: the only free one was the wall of the convent of Sant'Antonio, half destroyed by bombs.
The mural speaks of peace and harmony. At the center, four little men joined at the waist form the Pisan cross. At the upper right, two human figures joined like a pair of scissors cut a snake: good defeating evil.
Higher up a man carries a dolphin on his shoulders, and on the left there are a dog, a monkey and a bird: the bond with nature. A woman with a child and a man with a television in place of his head show natural life and the technology that changes its rhythms.
You also notice two pairs of conjoined twins, perhaps a warning against nuclear disasters, and a yellow figure at upper left, like a matryoshka, to remind us that everyone is equal in rights and duties.
At the bottom, at street level, a little yellow man walks: he is the passerby, or the tourist, who stops for a moment in front of the work before going on toward the Tower.
The mural was cleaned in 2011 by the Haring Foundation, with the same company that had donated the paint in 1989. Then, in 2012, a protective substance slowed the aging of the colors.
Haring painted it in June 1989 in a few days, with the help of students and craftsmen. It is his last public work before he died, in 1990, and the only one meant to last. The title, chosen by him, is in Italian: a rarity among his works.
It all began with a meeting in New York. Haring met a Florentine student, Piergiorgio Castellani, who invited him to Tuscany. In Pisa he felt like painting a wall: the only free one was the wall of the convent of Sant'Antonio, half destroyed by bombs.
The mural speaks of peace and harmony. At the center, four little men joined at the waist form the Pisan cross. At the upper right, two human figures joined like a pair of scissors cut a snake: good defeating evil.
Higher up a man carries a dolphin on his shoulders, and on the left there are a dog, a monkey and a bird: the bond with nature. A woman with a child and a man with a television in place of his head show natural life and the technology that changes its rhythms.
You also notice two pairs of conjoined twins, perhaps a warning against nuclear disasters, and a yellow figure at upper left, like a matryoshka, to remind us that everyone is equal in rights and duties.
At the bottom, at street level, a little yellow man walks: he is the passerby, or the tourist, who stops for a moment in front of the work before going on toward the Tower.
The mural was cleaned in 2011 by the Haring Foundation, with the same company that had donated the paint in 1989. Then, in 2012, a protective substance slowed the aging of the colors.