MICHELE FALANGA

Michele Falanga son of Giuseppe, an officer of the Royal Navy, and Vincenza Polimeni. He is the second-born, after Beatrice. His education, severe, has as a tutor his father who, exercising a great deal of control over his life, causes him disturbance. The conduct and risky speculations of his father, who squanders the entire family fortune by going into heavy debt, contribute to accentuating the gap between them, to the point of making it irreparable. In 1879 he moved with his mother to Messina (his father's native land), in the Santa Lucia district. Deprived of the paternal figure, his mother - a deeply religious woman, energetic and tied to social conventions - entrusted his education to an ecclesiastical tutor, the reverend father Restuccia di Mili San Pietro, who would significantly influence his cultural education. He loved studying, especially classical literary subjects, theology, philosophy and history. At the time, the city of Messina appeared to be in great turmoil and attracted much foreign capital, thus encouraging the opening of new commercial and industrial activities. In this context, Michele opened a large leather and shoe workshop in the city center, becoming a point of reference for the local aristocracy. In 1892, at the age of 27, he married Bordino Grazia di Montechiaro, with whom he went to live in via dei Monasteri, now via XXIV Maggio. His daily life was interrupted by one of the most tragic events in our country: the disastrous earthquake of 1908 that hit Messina involved Michele personally; buried under the rubble, he was rescued by his friend, Baron La Lumia Aldisio. Miraculously saved, he lost his sons Giuseppe and Samuele in the disastrous event. These events caused a complex concept of life and destiny to take root in him. His culture and in-depth knowledge of the dynamics of the city, both from a socio-cultural and historical perspective, pushed him to devote himself almost spasmodically to writing. He thus created texts in prose, poetry and short poems, in idiolect and otherwise, mainly focused on the culture and tradition of Messina; he was repeatedly called upon to write articles in periodicals of the time, regarding incisive political and social events. Some of these writings are now kept at the Regional Library of Messina. The outbreak of the First World War, which involved Italy in 1915, dragged him into war propaganda, making him participate in person in patriotic demonstrations and giving him new dynamism. Influenced by the authoritarian regime of the time (fascism), in what would later turn out to be the last period of his life, he felt the need to understand and even try his hand at visual art, intended both as a form of historical testimony and propaganda, also thanks to his assiduous attendance at art studios, first and foremost those of his friends: the painter Daniele Schmiedt and the sculptor “Tore” Calabrò. Being contemporary and simultaneously fellow countryman to artists of the caliber of Pippo Rizzo and Giulio D'Anna (a Messina by adoption), having the opportunity to visit first-hand their exhibitions dedicated to aeropainting, as a declination of futurist art, encouraged him - from the 1920s until his death - in the self-taught experimentation of sketches, drawings, projects and pictorial works. He created his creations mostly on “poor” supports, such as sheets of old magazines and newspapers that became a blank canvas for him to fill. These are works in themselves, created not for commercial or exhibition purposes, but to please one's creativity and cultivate one's talent. He died in Messina in 1937.