As in the poems

“Thank you” is the first word of Ettore Spalletti's speech during the lectio magistralis on the occasion of his Laurea Honoris Causa. An important academic recognition that our Department has bestowed on an internationally renowned artist, born in Abruzzo, capable of transmitting his talent and his aptitude for looking at life with exceptional sensitivity.

Initially, with the eye of a young novice student, I looked at the works of the master with superficiality, they appeared monochromatic, flat. Subsequently, I managed to grasp implicit and hidden meanings that go beyond the essence or color of the canvas itself, those monochromes suddenly came to life, evoking the sea, the hills or the blue of the Abruzzo sky. Recognizable and emotional elements, for those who experience the territory or look at it for the first time. I find it incredible to think how everyday scenarios and horizons can be so relevant as to mark a person's entire life: “the gifts that nature has given us” to quote Spalletti. By stopping time, as in a wait, we can allow what surrounds us to transform, so as to have the opportunity to grasp the beauty of change.

“The seventies were the years in which we lived by reading books of poetry […] in those years the thought was upon us, we continually tried to solve the problems that continue to exist today. […] In this time of absence, it seemed to me that I lived as the waste of thought. I went for a walk, as I always do, by the sea [...] To see that many people from far away walk on this coast [...] who report the beauty of poverty as their essence [...] then I thought that maybe something is happening extraordinary. In the future we will not live to give but to have. [...] When we manage to think of our life with the desire to give, I think that the streets will become straighter, the buildings will align with the desire to build a hospitable way, the hills will soften on the sea as in poems, when this green it will settle on the sea only in this way we will give back something that we still carry ... I carry it inside. "

Armando Scandone