Francesco Gabbani's Sanremo Winner References Desmond Morris's 'The Naked Ape'

Francesco Gabbani's song 'Occidentali's Karma' won the Sanremo Festival in 2017, becoming a hit in Italy. The lyrics reference Desmond Morris's 1967 book 'The Naked Ape', which controversially discussed human evolution from primates. Morris, born in 1928, is a zoologist, ethologist, and surrealist artist. His first solo exhibition was in 1948. In the 1970s, he created 'The Arena', part of a series at Oxford, now owned by the Tate. In 1957, he curated 'Painting by Chimpanzees' at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in London, which Picasso admired. Morris later became director of the ICA in 1967. He was the youngest surrealist and is now the last living member of the movement, nearly 90 years old.