The Venanzo Crocetti House-Museum

“I don’t believe in big discoveries in art: the way I see it, sudden shifts in “taste” end up disappearing as quickly as they appeared.”

This quote by the great Abruzzese artist Venanzo Crocetti illustrates the spirit that dominated our visit to the Roman museum home to his beautiful sculptures, mostly in bronze.

So this isn’t for those who relate to the squalid, repetitive language of contemporary art because fortunately here there is no trace of that. One caption reads: “The entire life as an artist completed in a universal message abounding in perfect joy, richness, and unifying harmony. Far from the heights of power … spontaneous happiness, cosmic peace.”

These are not just slightly New Age phrases stuck up merely to attract visitors, as shown by another sign on display that reads: “Venanzo Crocetti presents his personal contribution to the history of salvation.  Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti was a great admirer of Crocetti and aligned with his ideas. He would have called it “organic historicism,” specifying that he had freed himself from the bounds of metaphysics as well as ideology.”

Here we have total lucidity and awareness applied to art, to sculpture, that which every artist ought to do.

But for now let’s enjoy the beautiful, sincere work of Crocetti, who was, unsurprisingly, misunderstood.

But then again, how could we think that an artist who wrote these words would be appreciated these days?

“The Sacred is in Everything and Everything reverberates in its ever-changing breath, in the dimension of the mystery underlying all things.

Our expressions, all of them, are the will of God: they are all His, the things we think and the things we do.

Every day, God makes a new work of His creation.”