Painter and sculptor Mimmo Paladino has compared the Napoli squad to a work of art, with Marek Hamsik as a Goya and Kalidou Koulibaly Beethoven.
Paladino’s work can be found in the Royal Academy of Arts in London, the Venice Biennale and Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, but his first love is football.
“Maurizio Sarri’s team makes me think of Piet Mondrian plus Jackson Pollock, but with some concerns,” he told Il Mattino.
Painter and sculptor Mimmo Paladino has compared the Napoli squad to a work of art, with Marek Hamsik as a Goya and Kalidou Koulibaly Beethoven.
Paladino’s work can be found in the Royal Academy of Arts in London, the Venice Biennale and Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, but his first love is football.
“Maurizio Sarri’s team makes me think of Piet Mondrian plus Jackson Pollock, but with some concerns,” he told Il Mattino.
“Because Naples needs someone to finish it all and resolve the situation, a lone figure, a soloist. The Sarri organisation is always much appreciated, but at the end of the day, it always goes back to a solitary hero. It has always been this way, from San Gennaro to Diego Maradona.
“I love football because it is like a canvas that needs geometry. Even when it doesn’t look like there is structure, for example a Pollock painting.
“Marek Hamsik for me is a Goya, especially when he scores and screams. Pepe Reina, on the other hand, is a Luca Giordano when he opens his arms in a sense of belonging.
“Sarri is Picasso. Lorenzo Insigne is Armando De Stefano and Jose Callejon is Fuente, who from Caravaggio reaches Hemingway. The Beethoven of the team is Koulibaly. The Fifth Symphony.
“Dries Mertens, currently, is more of a musician than a painter: Erik Satie. I noticed after his goal against Lazio, he copied Maradona without even knowing he was doing it.
“I had seem something similar in a photograph taken by Ferdinando Scianna of a man disrobing during a procession, who unknowingly made the same movements as in a Piero della Francesca painting.”