His love for art, and sculpture in particular, led him to cross paths with one of the greatest sculptors of the twentieth century, Emilio Greco, through a pleasant “design” of destiny. He almost instantly became his favorite disciple and one of his most appreciated students during his years of study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples in the second half of the 1960s. He was literally struck by it. It is the human and artistic journey that characterizes the earthly adventure of my brother Vito La Rocca, art teacher, sculptor and photographer, who died prematurely 7 years ago, while he was fully immersed in the creation of sculptural works (busts, bas-reliefs, portraits, full figures…) intended to furnish, commissioned by the Vicariate with the approval of the Vatican, the new parish of Santa Madre Teresa di Calcutta in Rome. Artistic subjects of a sacred nature on the life and works of the Albanian saint alongside the poorest of the poor, which even after years have the flavour of an ideal legacy received by Vito La Rocca from the hands of his former master, Emilio Greco having been a leading artist also in the field of sacred art. As some of his most significant creations testify, starting from the bronze sculpture of Pope John XXIII inaugurated by Paul VI in the Basilica of St. Peter, from the Doors of the Cathedral of Orvieto with the stories of the 7 deadly sins, from the bas-reliefs of the church of St. John the Baptist in Florence designed by the great architect Giovanni Michelucci, or the artistic contributions for the exhibition “Dante in the Vatican” of 1984-85. Works considered among the greatest masterpieces of contemporary art, but which for Vito La Rocca also become true polar stars for his artistic training, having put into practice teachings and creative spirit with particular attention to his neoclassical figurative sculpture inspired by the sacred, the life of the Catholic Church, the Popes, the Second Vatican Council. Concentrating – up until the proximity of his sudden death – on figures such as John XXIII, John Paul II, Benedict XVI-Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Francis.
But also on ecclesiastical figures loved by the general public, by believers, non-believers, differently believing, like Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, without disdaining to draw inspiration from “anonymous” bishops, monsignors and “street” priests friends of the poor, needy and underprivileged like Monsignor Luigi Di Liegro, Don Luigi Ciotti, Don Antonio Mazzi and, lastly, Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta and her Missionaries of Charity. That is to say, all that ideal sculptural world of Vito La Rocca that began to take its first steps even before the years of the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples – where my brother entered after graduating as an Art Master at the Art Institute of Cascano, in the province of Caserta -, but from the first years of compulsory schooling, when as a self-taught person not a day went by without drawing, sculpting, making clay and wooden forms, bas-reliefs. Years of youthful instinctive and obstinate creativity that coincide with the years in which the Church leaps to the honours of international news thanks to the opening of the Second Vatican Council, whose council fathers are taken as models by Vito La Rocca for his first sculptures. And I, his only younger brother, always at his side, struck and fascinated by everything he is able to create with his hands, sculptures, drawings, oil paintings, tempera, sketches. Not disdaining, often and willingly, to bring some of his creations to school – I remember in particular a boat with a fisherman with a fishing line in his hand made of clay – to have them admired by my teacher and my classmates. Obviously explaining with ill-concealed pride that “these are works by my brother the sculptor”. Almost a sort of budding press officer committed to promoting his first public “relations”. Without disdaining to pose, at times, like a model for a sculpture or a painting, forced to remain still for hours on a chair or a makeshift stool, wearing uncomfortable clothes, large drapes, to represent to him as best as he can the figure or character to be sketched on a sheet of paper, a canvas and – more often – to be modeled in clay or in a bas-relief. For him, very intense creative moments. For me, interminable, very boring moments of posture, real torture, interspersed with his frequent calls of the type “stay still! Don’t move! You make me make mistakes if you keep moving!..”. In any case, first “artistic” steps that would have led the very young Vito La Rocca to undertake, after compulsory schooling, the paths to obtain the titles of Master of Art and Sculptor with a diploma from the Art Institute and in the temple of artistic education at the Academy of Fine Arts, under the guidance of none other than Emilio Greco, the great master who immediately saw in him the great creative potential that he would not fail to demonstrate shortly thereafter. Not only in the classrooms of the Neapolitan Academy, but also and above all in his workshop-studio in Itri, and in the exhibitions that he organized inside and outside his hometown, arousing great interest throughout the lower Lazio and in nearby Campania.
And even within the Diocese of Gaeta where he was commissioned to create, among other things, the silver bust of Archbishop Dionigio Casaroli (1926-1966), a commission that filled him with pride, as he would often recall when evoking his first artistic successes. But he was particularly struck when many of his sculptures were purchased for the first time by occasional admirers, “not so much for the commercial value of my sculptures, but – he usually confesses with natural simplicity – for the fact that people I have never met are attracted by my works, by figures born from my mind and shaped by my hands, to the point of wanting to take them into their homes, even paying me. When I give them away, even for a fee, I feel sorry because I feel that I will never see them again. When I sell my works I almost feel a lump in my throat, like a father is moved by the departure of a son”. Here then, from the touch of his hands, from the caresses of his fingers, from the prudent beats of mallet and chisel, a very personal artistic journey takes shape and “life” which includes, among the first significant creations, works dedicated to Pope John XXIII and the Council Fathers, portrayed in the solemnity of the sessions in the basilica, during the processions; as well as sculptures inspired by institutional moments, such as, for example, the historic meeting in the Vatican with Robert Kennedy fixed in a bas-relief of surprising realism, but also by a reinterpretation of the assassination of Abel by Cain, dressed in modern clothes according to his very personal reinterpretation of the biblical Creation in the light of contemporary dramas. Or, in the years to follow, unforgettable moments such as the meetings between Lady Diana and Mother Teresa of Calcutta with Pope Wojtyla, the first trip of Pope Francis to Lampedusa, on 8 August 2013, to bless the over 400 immigrants who drowned off the coast of Sicily. Works that Vito La Rocca will jealously keep in his artistic workshop, rarely exhibited to the public, alongside other creations made during his artistic maturity. Of all this vast production, today there remain, in total, over a hundred works, mostly busts, bas-reliefs and subjects in the round on sacred themes, but also several sculptures inspired by the “characters” particularly loved by his hometown, the Madonna della Civita, venerated in the sanctuary of the same name for over 1000 years, and Frà Diavolo, born Michele Pezza, a native of Itri, among the major opponents-resisters to the Napoleonic troops of the late 18th century. English: Works that remained “orphaned”, packaged, catalogued and stored in the warehouse, after his sudden death, which occurred on 25 September 2017, at the end of a pleasant chat with me, on the cell phone, while he was driving to the foundry to collect some bronze sculptures dedicated to the Pontiffs of the Twentieth and Twenty-first centuries that would have been exhibited in his new exhibition. Among which, of particular suggestion, a dramatic high relief depicting Pope Francis surrounded by hands seeking help from shipwrecked people about to drown in wild sea waves and shattered boats. All too clear is the reference-warning to the tragedies of the Mediterranean “which has become the tomb of thousands of migrants fleeing from wars, hunger, oppression, disease, as the Pontiff forcefully denounces”, Vito La Rocca used to explain when presenting his new subjects taken as models “from the tragedies of the sea” or from other calamities such as wars, daily violence. A world of sculptural art, and not, that of my brother, linked to daily dynamics – strictly personal, but not for this reason worthy of being left in oblivion – on which the spotlight is formally turned once again by the new cultural center that will be inaugurated in Itri on September 25th to remember his figure, his work and his vast artistic production, the “Studio ArteViva – Vito La Rocca” in Piazza Annunziata.
A center born with the ambition of becoming an artistic-cultural reference point, a meeting place and production of events on the various forms of art, starting from sculpture, painting and photography, to which the Itran artist has dedicated his entire life, explains the photojournalist Amedeo Masella, a long-time collaborator of Vito La Rocca, artistic director of the Studio. An ambition, but also a pleasant utopian design caressed to keep alive that love for art that has characterized my brother’s life since his first steps, interrupted abruptly, too quickly, just at the moment in which his sculptures were about to attract attention and interests unthinkable before his meeting with the master Emilio Greco. “His sources of inspiration have been multiple, first and foremost the sacred, but without forgetting subjects linked to classical culture and everyday life. Significantly, however, the last works of Vito La Rocca were dedicated to Mother Teresa, whom he portrayed through busts and bas-reliefs, alone and together with the Missionaries of Charity, her religious order, depicting the salient moments of her life as a missionary among the common people, the poor, and the great of the earth, Pontiffs, Heads of State, Royal Houses. Works intended largely to furnish, by decision of the Vatican, the new Roman parish that the Vicariate of Rome dedicated to Mother Teresa in the wake of the Great Jubilee of 2000”, recalls the director Masella at the inauguration of the “Studio ArteViva”, marked by the blessing by the parish priest Don Guerino Piccione, the unveiling of the commemorative plaque and the display case dedicated to the images (photos, sculptures, posters…) of the artist at the entrance to the studio, in the presence of city authorities, friends and acquaintances. Among the family members, his wife Silvana Sepe, his children Daniele, Tiziana, Cinzia. And many friends. Even, a nice group of classmates during the years of the Art Institute of Cascano and the Academy of Fine Arts of Naples. As if to say, a small-great artistic history that continues.