A Milano a charity auction on great 900th century artists to help a village in Eritrea

A Milano a charity auction on great 900th century artists to help a village in Eritrea.

An auction of works of art to raise funds for two projects: one for humanitarian purposes and the other for cultural purposes. The event will be held on Monday 30 October, at 18 pm, atAuditorium of Opera di San Francesco on viale Piave, with entrance from via Kramer 5. The list of works that will go up for auction, with their descriptions, is available on the website: www.missioni.org.

Among the artists present names such as Enrico Castellani, Piero Dorazio, Angelo Savelli, Gianfilippo Usellini, Lucio Pel Pezzo, Renato Guttuso, Salvator Dalì, Gillo Dorfles, Mario Nigro, Emilio Isgrò. The estimates of the works vary from 30 to 1.500 euros. The percentage relating to auction fees will not be applied and therefore all works will not be burdened by purchase commissions.

It will be possible to view the works from 10.00 to 12.00 and from 15.00 to 18.00 on Saturday 28 and Sunday 29 October and from 15.00 until the auction held by the expert Raphaelle Blanga, formerly Sotheby's.

The humanitarian project is in favor of the Capuchin Foreign Missions Onlus of the Capuchin Missionary Friars of Milano, based in Piazzale Cimitero Maggiore 5, and involves the completion of a water well in Tuguliti village, in the Eparchy of Barentu, in Eritrea, where the Bishop is the Capuchin Monsignor Thomas Osman.

The village, located 34 km south-east of Barentu, is made up of 450 families for a total of 2.250 people, including many children. As Monsignor Thomas Osman Ofmcap – responsible for the project – informs, «In order to get water, the villagers have to travel kilometers using donkeys and dromedaries or carrying the barrels on their shoulders; the journey is tiring for children and pregnant women who are often forced to travel the same route several times a day to meet the needs of the whole family. Now people draw water from open-air wells, which is bacteriologically impure and is therefore the cause of the spread of diseases and intestinal infections, which particularly affect children".

The implementation of the project in Eritrea involves the construction of the water collection tank, the installation of a solar-powered pump, the purchase and installation of pipes and three distribution points to serve several distant settlements. The funds raised from the auction will be donated entirely to Missioni Estere onlus which will send them to Mons. Thomas Osman.

The other project involves the restoration of some of the 170 frescoes on the external walls of the houses in Arcumeggia (Casalzuigno-Varese), created by some of the major contemporary artists. Among others: Sante Monachesi, Achille Funi, Umberto Faini, Gianfilippo Usellini, Ernesto Treccani, Aligi Sassu, Giuseppe Migneco, Fiorenzo Tomea, Cristoforo De Amicis, Giuseppe Montanari, Remo Brindisi, Bruno Saetti, Gianni Dova, Aldo Carpi, Ferruccio Ferrazzi, Luigi Montanarini, Enzo Morelli, Francesco Menzio, Gioxe De Micheli, Eugenio Tomiolo, Giovanni Brancaccio, etc. They were painted since 1956 on the initiative of the Provincial Tourist Board of Varese. The funds raised will be donated directly to the Pro Loco of Arcumeggia.