Matteo Fato Wins Ermanno Casoli Award, Creates Collective Painting with Elica Employees

Matteo Fato (born 1979, Pescara) has been awarded the Ermanno Casoli Award by the Fondazione Ermanno Casoli, which also entrusted him with E-straordinario, the autumn workshop that Elica, a leading designer of range hoods, has been offering its employees for over a decade. On October 20, the painting "Gentile come un ritratto" was inaugurated: a work created by 159 participants over five days when Fato's studio moved into the production lines of the Fabriano and Castelfidardo plants. Starting from a reflection on the presumed self-portrait of Gentile da Fabriano, who places himself among the crowd in his "Adoration of the Magi," each participant contributed a brushstroke. The result is a relatively small canvas but rich in meaning: without physical encounter except with the artist, the painting encapsulates a compact collectivity that expressed itself in an anomalous but always necessary teamwork.