Vittorio Sgarbi
Vittorio Umberto Antonio Maria Sgarbi (born May 8, 1952 in Ferrara) is an Italian art critic, politician, cultural commentator and TV personality. A popular mediatic phenomenon, is he best known for his glib and outrageous verbal aggressiveness (he shouts at and insults someone in almost every TV appearance). A member of the Parliament of Italy in the XI, XII, XIII and XIV legislatures, since 2008 he has served as Mayor of Salemi.
Biography
Sgarbi received his laurea in philosophy, specialising in history of art, from the University of Bologna. Initially working in the artistic domain, he was appointed Inspector for the Maintenance of History and Art in Veneto. For three years he taught history of artistic technique at the University of Udine.
Sgarbi is unmarried. He has acknowledged three children, commenting: "I am against [conventional] paternity. The category of 'father' is not one to which I feel that I must belong. That said, I am also against abortion. There are women who wanted children with me, but I do not, because there can be no obligation to act as a father".[1]
Politics
A controversial character in terms of politics, he changed his party affiliation with notable frequency: he started his political career in 1990 as mayoral candidate of Pesaro for the Italian Communist Party; he then became city councillor of San Severino Marche running as Italian Socialist Party candidate, being then elected as mayor, his candidacy being supported by the Italian Social Movement and Christian Democracy. In 1992 he was elected to the Italian Chamber of Deputies under the Italian Liberal Party banner, and then chose to join the Italian Radicals.
As a candidate for Silvio Berlusconi's "good government" coalition, he campaigned actively in southern Italy during the general elections in 1994, denouncing the excessive power of investigative magistrates, the severe article 41-bis prison regime and the damage done to the regional economy by organized crime investigations. He visited Giuseppe Piromalli, a boss of the criminal 'Ndrangheta in Calabria, in prison.[2][3]
In 1999 he founded his own libertarian movement, I Liberal Sgarbi-I Libertari, and successively joined Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia party, being part of a centre-right cabinet from 2001 to 2002 as undersecretary for culture. In 2004 he chose to run together with the Italian Republican Party in the European elections, but obtained only a 0.7% of votes, being not elected.
In 2005 he self-declared his candidacy for the L'Unione centre-left primary election, which was however rejected due to his past participation to the Berlusconi cabinet. He then ran unsuccessfully with the Consumers' List, part of the centre-left coalition, in 2006. He later chose to leave the centre-left, and announced his intention to run in the 2006 mayoral election in Milan; he then ruled out his candidacy after reaching an agreement with centre-right candidate Letizia Moratti. Sgarbi consequently served as culture spokesman until April 2008, when he was sacked by Letizia Moratti following months of disputes between them. On June 2008 he successfully ran as mayor of Salemi, a little town in South-Western Sicily, with the support of the Union of Christian and Centre Democrats and the Christian Democracy for the Autonomies, winning the election following the second ballot with over 60% of votes. He later run unsuccessfully as a Movement for Autonomies MEP candidate in the 2009 elections.
References
- ^ "Dichiarazione di Sgarbi alla Stampa di Torino".
{{cite web}}: Unknown parameter|access=ignored (|access-date=suggested) (help) - ^ Italy: The Crooks in Control, by Alexander Stille, The New York Review of Books, April 17, 2008
- ^ Sciarrone, Mafie vecchie, mafie nuove, p. 110
- Template:It icon Sciarrone, Rocco (1998). Mafie vecchie, mafie nuove: Radicamento ed espansione, Rome: Donzelli Editore ISBN 88-7989-435-8