In the eighteenth century, the Tonnara del Corvo employed many people, but after nearly a century of activity, it closed because it had become unprofitable. However, the sea continued to support the locals, and the sailors worked for a long time, navigating to transport goods by boat from one port to another. The construction of the railway dealt another hard blow to the already fragile economy of the small town, but once again, the sea was the resource, and thanks to the fishing of anchovies and sardines, Castel di Tusa survived the passage of time. On the beach, which had always only welcomed fishermen’s nets and a few holidaymakers, there was also an old abandoned building. After a thorough renovation, that building became a hotel, different from others, unique in Sicily and perhaps even unique in the world, the Art Hotel Atelier on the Sea. Sardines and anchovies from the beautiful blue sea of Sicily then gave way to quality tourism, and made space for a new and flourishing economy with great ethical value, of which Art, written with a capital A, is the founding pivot. The creator of this ambitious project was Antonio Presti, a modern Sicilian patron and artist. The choice of the location, however, was not accidental because there was the cement factory and the family business in Castel di Tusa. After his father’s death, young Antonio, 29 years old and an engineering graduate, decided that his future was not in road construction but in art, thus making a life choice almost like an existential mission. “I didn’t want to dedicate my life to money. I discovered art and what possibilities it could offer me. So I took that money [my father’s inheritance, ed.] and put it at the service of an ideal.”
The story begins about twenty years ago. Just a few kilometers from his hometown, in memory of his father, Antonio Presti founded the Fiumara d’Arte sculpture park, which today is one of the most visited places in Sicily. The artistic project unfolds along the dry bed of the Tusa stream, which flows down from the forests of the Madonie and Nebrodi mountains to the sea. Between 1984 and 1990, important Italian artists such as Tano Festa, Pietro Consagra, Antonio di Palma, Italo Lanfredini, created massive contemporary artworks commissioned by Presti that transformed the old riverbed into a large open-air museum. Although a large landowner, Presti decided to install the works on public land because he wanted to donate the newly born cultural site to the State, and therefore to the people. But Sicilian bureaucracy blindly followed its course, also sparking outrage in the international art world. Presti was charged with illegal construction, underwent eight trials, and was sentenced to 15 days in prison and the demolition of the illegal works. Finally, in 1990, the Court of Cassation cleared him of all charges, and since 1991 Fiumara d’Arte has been part of the State’s artistic and cultural heritage.
Despite judicial misadventures, his enthusiasm for art did not stop. In Catania, on the southern coast of the island, Antonio Presti opened his eighteenth-century home to young artists with the intent to give back space to creativity and free artists from the economic constraints that increasingly govern artistic production. In short, a project designed purely for the pleasure of creating art. The “Casa Stesicorea“, named after Stesicoro Square on which it overlooks, thus became a true forge for artistic projects; every year its spaces are redesigned and open to the public for a great international art event.
The success of the initiative in Catania mirrors that of Castel di Tusa, where the eccentric patron created the Atelier sul Mare hotel in the 1990s. The idea is simple yet revolutionary: to appreciate art, it is not enough just to look at it but you must live within it. “It is no wonder“, Presti argues, “that so many people neglect contemporary art when even visitors to exhibitions only spend a few seconds in front of each painting, sculpture, or installation“. An eclectic and constantly evolving project that, through perspective and color games and thanks to a skillful use of ancient materials and modern technologies, manages to create atmospheres of intimate reflection or absolute sensory exaltation. Creativity transforms an anonymous hotel room into a place where “you sleep in a poem and wake up in a work of art“, where the guest completes the work itself, becoming almost an integral part of it. The hotel building is three stories high, white, in Mediterranean style, with a huge golden Nike outside that seems to support the entire side of the building. The walls of the lobby are covered with national and international newspapers that published the judicial events of Fiumara d’Arte, and the reception desk is a large slab resting on two stones carved by Bobo Otera. Above, the phrase “Devotion to Beauty” stands out, a battle cry of Antonio Presti but also a recall of a great cultural event organized by Presti himself in Catania in 1999, during which a monumental 15-meter candle made by sculptor Arnaldo Pomodoro together with 15 students from the Academy of Fine Arts was lit, in honor of Sant’Agata, patron saint of the city. The hotel’s restaurant overlooks the sea and is a real contemporary art gallery, with works from the patron’s private collection from Tusa.
There are a total of 40 rooms, half of which, while defined as standard, are furnished with sculptures, paintings, ceramics, and other contemporary artworks.
Then there are the 20 “art” rooms, all different from one another, created by renowned Italian and foreign artists: Danielle Mitterand, Raoul Ruiz, Mauro Staccioli, Hidetoshi Nagasawa, Piero Dorazio, Graziano Marini, Agnese Purgatorio, Ute Pyka, Maurizio Mochetti and Adele Cambria, Cristina Bertelli, Mario Ceroli, Sislej Xhafa, Renato Curcio, Fabrizio Plessi, Paolo Icaro, Maria Lai, Luigi Mainolfi, Michele Canzoneri, Annalisa Furnari, Vincenzo Consolo, Dario Bellezza, Umberto Leone, and Antonio Presti himself.
Each room has a suggestive name that evokes the theme addressed: The Mouth of Truth, The Room of the Denied Sea, Trinacria, Dreams among Signs, I Embark on a Paper Boat, The Tower of Sigismondo, The Nest, The Room of Earth and Fire, Shadow Line, The Room of the Necessary Rite, Mystery for the Moon, Hammam, The Room Without No, Energy, The Room of the Water Bearers, The Room of the Prophet, The Room of Painting.
In the making of the rooms, there was no intervention from the commissioner, and all artists transferred their emotions into the work using styles that range from Japanese minimalism to archaic Arab-Mediterranean forms. Some were inspired by Calderon de la Barca’s play La vida es sueño, others questioned the evolution of writing, some paid homage to Sicily, and others preferred to remember the poet and director Pier Paolo Pasolini. Therefore, to live in symbiosis with artistic creation, each guest is given the opportunity to choose where to stay based on their mood at the moment and, of course, within availability.
Speaking of his room Mystery for the Moon, Hidetoshi Nagasawa said “I imagine the hypothetical visitor who enters the Atelier, goes to reception, goes up to his room with the key, and locks himself inside. From that moment, that space becomes ‘his’ space, a living museum to be enjoyed. Not a hotel with artworks on display, but a place where people can live in the museum, a human-scale museum, with all the works on a human scale. For an hour, two days, a week, anyone can live within the work: in my opinion, this is a unique situation“.
Art for Art’s sake, therefore, is the guiding principle that Antonio Presti has followed for several years to try, at least on his small scale, to contain the unstoppable spread of the “art-business” pairing, but also so that “devotion to beauty” spreads with simplicity among common people.
Does it work? In Castel di Tusa, it certainly seems so.
