Giovanni Righetti, Camera decorata a mosaico / Mosaic decorated room

all photos courtesy of Catharina Pinelli

About 12 km northwest of the city of Verona in the north of Italy  there is the municipality of Negrar di Valpolicella with about 16,000 inhabitants (end 2004). 

In the 1970s the municipality experienced a considerable growth in population, mainly due to influx from outside, such as well-to-do residents from  nearby Verona who found a pleasant living place in Negrar.

From the point of view of art environments, in Negrar di Valpolicella there is a special creation. In a room in the basement of a house the four walls and the floor have been richly decorated with a variety of mosaics.

Life and works

This art environment was created by Giovanni  Righetti, who was born in a simple family in Negrar di Valpolicella on December 12, 1950 . His mother did the housework and his father worked on farms and on road construction in the area. Giovanni was the only son and had three sisters.

As a boy he was already good at drawing and he also ventured into making sculptures, working stones that he found in the area. The local pastor was enthusiastic about Giovanni's artistic aptitude. However, his parents could not afford an education at an art school and, after holding several jobs, Righetti became a mason, a job he would practice for most of his working life.

In his late teens, Giovanni made a trip to Rome, where he viewed mosaics made in Roman times. And around age thirty he made sculptures with an archaeological slant, such as runes, amulets and totems. 

The larger creations were displayed in the garden at his house,in the La Bassa district, a part of the community surrounded by a beautiful, hilly landscape. The smaller creations were placed indoors in a display case.

An extensive creative project

The artistic activities of Giovanni Righetti summarized above form a prelude to the major project he would undertake in the years 2020-2022. He was 70 years old when he started and had been retired for several years. 

The idea was initially to decorate one wall of a room in the basement of his house with mosaic, but gradually all walls and the floor were decorated, a major project during the period of lock-downs due to the COVID pandemic, on which he also worked on Saturdays and Sundays.

The first wall he decorated is depicted in the very first photo. In the center is a geometric mosaic-filled circle, flanked by a colorful star on the left and an alien on the right.

After that first wall, Righetti continued to decorate the other walls and the floor in the room in the basement, creating creations not only from his imagination, but also by drawing inspiration from legends, stories and myths, as well as historical events and famous sculptures. 

There are imaginative scenes with dragons, but also an image of the sculpture of the mermaid in Copenhagen. Noah's ark, the Trojan horse, the pyramids, they are part of the decorations.

Righetti has worked on his decorative project with great diligence and perseverance. Just to collect the pieces of marble that make up the mosaics, he had to search the streets and the dumps of local quarries. The photos in this post also demonstrate Righetti's sensitivity to color and the great degree of precision used to manufacture the tiles that cover the floor.

To what extent this particular art environment can be visited by those interested in this form of art is unclear. Righetti is a modest person and it is not to be expected that he will transform his house into a kind of museum. In addition, he has said that he doesn't see himself as an artist; he considers making mosaics more of a playful activity. 

So it remains to be seen how things will continue in the coming years. Righetti himself said he sometimes wondered how archaeologists in later times would react if they stumbled upon the mosaics during excavations at the site of his house.......

Documentation

* The text in this post is based on an article recently published in the Italian magazine Osservatorio Outsider Art: 

Daniela Rosi, La stanza meravigliosa. Racconto Musivo di Giovanni Righetti (The wonderful room. Mosaic story by Giovanni Righetti), Osservatorio Outsider Art, no. 25, Spring 2023, p 40-53   (photos by Catharina Pinelli)

As far as could be ascertained, no publications have appeared in regional newspapers

Giovanni Righetti

Mosaic decorated room

Address details not available

Negrar di Valpolicella, dept Verona, region Veneto, Italy