Keith Haring 'Tuttomondo'

Murale Tuttomondo, Keith Haring (G. Bettini, Comune di PIsa)
Murale Tuttomondo, Keith Haring (G. Bettini, Comune di PIsa)
The Tuttomondo mural was made by Keith Haring in 1989. Piergiorgio Castellani, a Pisan boy, one day met him in New York and proposed him to go to Pisa to create one of his street art works: Keith Haring accepted and was welcomed with open arms. Before starting to paint, he walked around the city to absorb its colours, vibrations and ideas... thus this hymn to love and harmony between men, animals and nature was born. At the end, they asked him to give the work a title, so he said 'Tuttomondo' (all the world): this was therefore what he found in Pisa; since ancient times a river and maritime port, a cultural centre for its universities and, today, one of the most famous tourist cities in the world. Here every day thousands of people from every nation meet, live and study.

Some figures:
  • At the top right there is a heart, a message of love in the hands of a human figure who, like a matryoshka, enters the body of another figure, which in turn enters that of another, as if they were the same person. The figures are of different colours and represent three of the most widespread ethnic groups in the world.
  • Next to the three figures is the snake, which is broken by scissors, formed by two human figures: only acting together can evil be annihilated. Indeed, the snake, in many cultures, represents evil and for Keith Haring, sometimes, it translates into a signal of the fight against AIDS, a disease that, in February 1990, a few months after finishing the mural in Pisa, led him to death.
  • The figure with the head shaped like a television could represent an eye on the world. A positive meaning, therefore, if we consider the role of TV as it became part of the daily life of families, at the end of the 1950s. Excessive use of mass media, however, and in this case of television, can lead to detachment from reality, as Haring also denounces with his other works, for example the child tied to the television by an umbilical cord...
  • The hand, at the bottom, made up of five figures, recalls the artisanal work, the importance of working together, the importance of the hands with which one creates, shapes, greets, shakes other hands, prays, extends things and caresses.
  • The yellow man, the one who seems to walk out of the mural could be Keith Haring himself coming out of the work, once finished, symbolising the continuous human movement, the impossibility of remaining still, and that time, in turn, would stop. So nothing stays the same, everything moves and changes.
  • Animal figures mingle, in this dance, with figures of women, men and children: a butterfly, a monkey, a bat, a fish, a dog, a hen and a dolphin, symbol of the sea.
  • The trefoil yellow cross in the centre is the symbol of Pisa.
  • The mother with the child is the motherly love.
FIVE ROSES BED&BREAKFAST
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Corso Italia, 156
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120m
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130m
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