Crotone, 70 years of the Crotone prize: a photographic exhibition

Crotone, 70 years of the Crotone prize: a photographic exhibition.

It was inaugurated on the evening of April 8, 2022, at the House of Culture, the archival-photographic exhibition dedicated to the 70 years since the establishment of the Crotone Prize (April 4, 1952). The Department of Culture proposes an exhibition of unpublished archive material which opens the curtain on one of the highest moments of the city's cultural life.

The mayor Voce, the councilor for culture Rachele Via and the councilor for entertainment Gianni Pitingolo attended the inauguration. Present were the president of the City Council Giovanni Greco, the sector manager Francesco Marano and the staff of the Culture Office who curated the exhibition, Valeria Cassano, Carmen Messinetti and Antonio Siclari.

70 years of the Crotone award: the exhibition

The audio recovery and editing work was carried out by Giampiero Leto while Antonello Scerra created videos and clips. Present were the curators of the photographic exhibition Gaetano Leonardi and Christian Palmieri.

The Crotone Prize Fund, part of the Municipal Historical Archives, preserves around a thousand documents. Many, including deliberative acts, regulations, notices. And then the correspondence between the administration and the members of the Jura, the prize winners, the publishing houses and the organizers of other literary prizes, first of all the Viareggio Prize.

There are still the contacts made with RAI and the newspapers of the time, the press review, the bursar's reports. And again: posters, invitations, reservations, hotel and restaurant receipts, menus and meal vouchers relating to the secretariat and organizational apparatus of the Award.

A rich and detailed collection of various types of documentation which helps to rebuild a well-branched and defined organizational machine. Above all, it is fascinating to find the presence, among the papers, of signatures of some of the greatest Italian writers and poets. Sciascia, Corrado Alvaro, Pasolini, Alberto Moravia and Gadda for years they were usual frequencies in a peripheral city in Southern Italy.

An exhibition divided into two

The installation presents two sections:

1. an archival-documentary section which displays the paper and audio-visual memories of the Award. There is unreleased audio relating to the awards ceremony of the VII edition. This was held on 6 April 1963 at the Cinema Ariston. Participating as guests were Leonida Repaci, the Sicilian poet Ignazio Buttitta and the singer Miranda Martino;
2. a photographic section, curated by Christian Palmieri and Gaetano Leonardi which displays images relating to the Award, from 1956 to 1963.

He was operated on a selection of documents, which however maintains the aim of telling the life of the Prize. Three years in particular are mentioned.

• 1952, the year the Prize was established.
• 1956, the year of its first actual edition.
• 1963, the year of the seventh and last edition of Crotone, to which the audio refers.

It couldn't be missing then, in the year in which it occurs the centenary of the birth of Pier Paolo Pasolini. A small section dedicated to the writer is dedicated to him, who won the 1959 edition with the novel "A violent life". The exhibition will be open to the public throughout the month of April.