GASPARE MUTOLO
OIL PAINTING ON CANVAS
Papaveri
70x100
Year 2020
Original work certified by the artist
Artist Biography
Born in Palermo in 1940 former mafioso Collaborator of justice and painter Known as Gasparino he was initially a mechanic then he dedicated himself to crime As a young man he only dealt with small thefts until in 1965 he was arrested for criminal association In prison he met Tot? Riina his cellmate for eight months and his teacher in the game of checkers It was he who recommended reading I Beati Paoli by William Galt the cult novel of the mafia but he also suggested abandoning petty crime and joining the mafia easier to kill than to steal claimed Riina advising him to Rosario Riccobono boss of the Partanna and Mondello neighborhoods just released from prison After a series of arrests and releases in 1973 he met Riccobono and Riina who were free in the meantime and joined the Cosa Nostra through the rites of the pungintina and Santina burned girl burned by the partisans because she spied on the fascists The essential things are these if a man of honor makes a mistake with the wife of a man of honor with a daughter or a sister the father even with tears in his eyes must strangle the son There must never be forgiveness even if thirty or forty years pass if a spy certainly doesnt die in bed but is killed by the mafia even if he is a hundred years old It is a principle and every effort is made so that he does not die in his bed Riccobono explained after the oath Married by proposal mandatory practice of the mafia he quickly became the closest collaborator of both of them also trusted by Riina driver Mutolo was an operational figure not one for dialogue murders extortion warnings kidnappings in 74 he was accused of Berlusconis kidnapping He then became a major drug dealer in contact with Singaporean Koh Bak Kin A profitable job which quickly allowed him to own an apartment and build a building. In 1982 he was saved by Riina from the Riccobono massacre but not from arrest and imprisonment in the maximum security prison of Sollicciano. It was within the walls of the Florentine penitentiary that Mutolo approached art. And thanks to the life sentence Mungo known as the Aragonese whose painting he admired during exercise time. They ended up in cell together and for the Sicilian mafioso it was the beginning of a new way of communicating with colors and brushes. In prison he also met Luciano Liggio and signed the paintings on some canvases for him. In 1986 he was involved in the Maxitrial instructed by Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino and after the first degree sentence December 87 he was sentenced to ten years. in prison In 91 Falcone proposed to him to collaborate. Gaspar we have to end it here cant you see what they re up to Both the pressure from the magistrate who he began to see with trust and respect and the attack on the mafioso Giovanni Bontade which also involved his wife a shocking precedent and not in line with the mafia ideal and the arrest of his wife he pushed Mutolo to speak but on the condition that only Falcone listened to him. Revelations which however the magistrate will never listen to having been transferred by Minister Martelli to the direction of the Criminal Affairs Department. Mutolo thus found himself entrusting his revelations only after the Capaci massacre to Borsellino who questioned him for the last time two days before the massacre in Via D Amelio. During the interrogations however strange phone calls followed one another first of all that of the minister Mancino accused in 2012 for perjury in the trial on the State-mafia negotiation to Borsellino precisely during an interview with Mutolo. A phone call that made the magistrate furious so nervous that he appeared before the repentant with a cigarette in his left hand and one just lit on his mouth. These are crazy But what do they mean what do they want to do cursed Borsellino referring to the involvement of institutional figures including men belonging to the Carabinieri and the secret services active in relations with the Mafia dissociation in the pact between the State and the Mafia. In 1993 thanks to the discounted sentences provided Mutolo was sentenced by the Court of Livorno to nine years of imprisonment. Among the statements made to Borsellino and then to Vigna the roles of Lima Andreotti Conti Barreca Mollica D'Antoni Signorino and Contrada.
Today he is a free man albeit on social security and lives off painting
excellent