Cherubino Gambardella with Antonio Balsamo, Lorenzo De Rosa, Maria Gelvi, Marco Pignetti, Salvatore Scandurra, Concetta Tavoletta and Armando Arena, Giovanni Canoro, Gaetano Cerullo, Paolo De Cristofaro, Gianluca Delle Rose, Brigida Di Costando, Roberto Di Fonzo, Vincenzo Mangiacapra, Composition after the strike on Villa Malaparte. Installation view at Palazzo Mora, 2016.

On a typical winter afternoon, a boat, not unlike an airplane, exploded near the Casa Malaparte in Capri. Everything caught fire until the last fuel tanks, leftover by the owner of the casa, an art writer, exploded. After the explosion, all of Malaparte’s research into the myths of 12th century architectural history was burned to ash. The stone self-portrait of the great engineer of ideas plummeted into the abyss of forgotten memories, as in Inside Out.
Malaparte passionately built his home as his autobiography. He was an unforgettable and intelligent snob, acting as an irremediable contagion in the world of architecture. Perhaps too overwrought. Before him, Bernard Rudofsky was in Capri.
This stateless architectural genius designed his home as a paradox for paupers wealthy in their own right, his idea of the true rich, those that do not need money, clothes, houses, or powerful friends.
In Positano, not too far from Capri, Rudofsky, together with Luigi Cosenza, pictured a villa for another type of richess, a handsome fisherman who had no need of anything except what he could get from the sweat of his brow or his line in the sea; a new Ulysses surely less dirty with more concern for his physical appearance. This Positano residence is a prefiguration of what the red house of Curzio Malaparte would have become if not for the unexpected events of that winter’s destructive day, even if not all was destroyed.
On the light blue island proceeding immediately after the explosion, strange new circumstances began to arise; Capo Massullo became a post-atomic boulder, and all the stories about Malaparte in the area took a sinister turn. This boulder slowly became a place where the agglomerated area, and the ruins contained therein, began to take shape as the new Casa Malaparte. It became a place for the wealthy paupers, much like the “post-atomic” friend in Ovosodo, the celebrated film by Paolo Verzì. Who were these young, wealthy paupers with such battered appearances?
Capri is rumored to be the island of luxury, white linen and aperitivos at sunset, which would have to prepare itself for a group of young haggard artists. First, the house was born from internal conflict; Curzio’s break with fascism led him towards an interest in Chinese social engineering. He thought of leaving to posterity welcoming architecture where artists from east and west could converge. However, an explosion of any kind never crossed his mind.
New discoveries, new life, emerges from the ashes of what has come before.
Together with my group of tutors and students, I pictured Capo Massullo as a new habitat for those who have no voice, if not their own wealth of nihilism. These wayfarers will land on Curzio Malaparte’s promontory, and the regulars of the island will be aghast as these young artists do not bring fresh, but a paradoxical smell to the air, malodorous to the status quo.
They will occupy the concrete structure, drinking and carousing in the warm Mediterranean sunshine. At sunset, on the helicopter landing pad, facing the Faraglioni, a ceremonial burning of an effigy will take place. After the sun has gone down, there are only cots indoors, surrounded by concrete walls and the remnants of Rudovsky’s Lascaux-esque graffiti.What remains is left to the elements, with concerns about so-called inherent value, including the deeply expensive silver cutlery.
In conclusion, we share with you the images our inexplicable change as a testament to contemporary archeology. As time is cyclical, one can return to these moments that have yet to happen again, as they surely will, as they have before.