For several weeks now, at nightfall, in the dark, narrow alleys of the proud city of Brescia, Northern Italy, a masked shadow stealthily moves from house to house—determined to do good while honest people sleep.
This is not Batman, who, having left the skies of Gotham City, has chosen to retire between Milan and Venice, nor is it Zorro, tired of prancing around in the Californian dust and preferring the stone pavements of Lombardy.
His weapon of vengeance is neither a laser gun nor a leather whip, but a stepladder, a paintbrush and a bucket of paint.
Our masked man—for he is a man, and that is one of the few things we know about him—is in fact a house painter. His mission? To restore his beloved city to its former beauty by ridding it, come nightfall, of everything that humiliates and disfigures it: tags, graffiti, shreds of torn posters that deface the walls of homes and monuments in the city that was once a proud Lombard duchy, a Venetian dependency, and a heroine of the Risorgimento.
As we are in the age of Instagram, this very discreet hero takes care to film his interventions. Quick, surgical, effective. He knows his craft. His movements are sure and precise, and in his bag, he always has the right shade to restore colourful harmony to the battered façades. He handles ochres and terracottas better than anyone. Under his expert hand, the ‘Free Palestine’ and other ‘F**k you’ graffiti quickly disappears. Ghost Pitùr, as he is known—the ghost painter—now has more than 160,000 followers and is honoured by the local and national press on the peninsula.
His only signature is a small note left for the residents he has liberated: “Questo e un atto di amore urbano.” This is an act of urban love. The man is not only a courageous and hard-working craftsman, he also has the soul of a poet, full of sensuality. He loves his city as one loves a muse. He caresses the walls with the gentleness of someone touching the skin of his beloved.
The Italian left-wing daily La Repubblica interviewed the phenomenon. The avenging painter wants to be talked about, but not too much. He insists on remaining anonymous to guarantee the purity of his intentions: “If I reveal my identity, people will think I want to advertise myself, because during the day I am a real house painter.” He acts for free: in our mercantile world where everything is an opportunity to sell and promote, his approach is surprising. Has it become so incongruous to be a lover of beauty?
The progressive journalist who interviewed him cannot help but praise his work with a touch of petty sarcasm. Fighting for beauty and against street expressionism today seems a little old-fashioned. “It’s like trying to empty the sea with a spoon,” she says ironically. So what? The builders of Italian cities are anonymous figures who have left us masterpieces. What could be more natural than for one of their own to take up the torch today? There is much to be done to restore beauty to our cities, when citizens and councillors sometimes agree and strive to destroy the urban harmony built by our forefathers, who believed that the city of men was meant to resemble the city of God.
One day, who knows, perhaps a statue will be erected in the heart of Brescia to the man who loved beauty too much to find rest.
Ghost Pitùr, The Masked Avenger of Beauty
Clock Tower at the Loggia Square at Night, Brescia, Italy
Zairon, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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For several weeks now, at nightfall, in the dark, narrow alleys of the proud city of Brescia, Northern Italy, a masked shadow stealthily moves from house to house—determined to do good while honest people sleep.
This is not Batman, who, having left the skies of Gotham City, has chosen to retire between Milan and Venice, nor is it Zorro, tired of prancing around in the Californian dust and preferring the stone pavements of Lombardy.
His weapon of vengeance is neither a laser gun nor a leather whip, but a stepladder, a paintbrush and a bucket of paint.
Our masked man—for he is a man, and that is one of the few things we know about him—is in fact a house painter. His mission? To restore his beloved city to its former beauty by ridding it, come nightfall, of everything that humiliates and disfigures it: tags, graffiti, shreds of torn posters that deface the walls of homes and monuments in the city that was once a proud Lombard duchy, a Venetian dependency, and a heroine of the Risorgimento.
As we are in the age of Instagram, this very discreet hero takes care to film his interventions. Quick, surgical, effective. He knows his craft. His movements are sure and precise, and in his bag, he always has the right shade to restore colourful harmony to the battered façades. He handles ochres and terracottas better than anyone. Under his expert hand, the ‘Free Palestine’ and other ‘F**k you’ graffiti quickly disappears. Ghost Pitùr, as he is known—the ghost painter—now has more than 160,000 followers and is honoured by the local and national press on the peninsula.
His only signature is a small note left for the residents he has liberated: “Questo e un atto di amore urbano.” This is an act of urban love. The man is not only a courageous and hard-working craftsman, he also has the soul of a poet, full of sensuality. He loves his city as one loves a muse. He caresses the walls with the gentleness of someone touching the skin of his beloved.
The Italian left-wing daily La Repubblica interviewed the phenomenon. The avenging painter wants to be talked about, but not too much. He insists on remaining anonymous to guarantee the purity of his intentions: “If I reveal my identity, people will think I want to advertise myself, because during the day I am a real house painter.” He acts for free: in our mercantile world where everything is an opportunity to sell and promote, his approach is surprising. Has it become so incongruous to be a lover of beauty?
The progressive journalist who interviewed him cannot help but praise his work with a touch of petty sarcasm. Fighting for beauty and against street expressionism today seems a little old-fashioned. “It’s like trying to empty the sea with a spoon,” she says ironically. So what? The builders of Italian cities are anonymous figures who have left us masterpieces. What could be more natural than for one of their own to take up the torch today? There is much to be done to restore beauty to our cities, when citizens and councillors sometimes agree and strive to destroy the urban harmony built by our forefathers, who believed that the city of men was meant to resemble the city of God.
One day, who knows, perhaps a statue will be erected in the heart of Brescia to the man who loved beauty too much to find rest.
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