Between January 24 and 31, 2020, Ache77 created a mural at the Scuola Primaria Fanciulli in Via Policarpo Petrocchi 32, Florence. The mural depicts the memory of Janusz Korczak (Henryk Goldszmit), a Polish freethinker of Jewish origin, doctor, pedagogue, poet, educator and pioneer in the fight for the rights of the little ones, as well as one of the countless victims of the Shoah. He declared that every child has three basic rights: the right to die, the right to a present life, and the right to be fully oneself. Korczak’s works form the basis of International Charter of the Rights of the Child. Ache77, who often conveys the messages of his works through glances, has depicted two of them, reflecting fear; conscious his, unconscious her. He has already witnessed all the cruelty that humanity is capable of inflicting, but is unable to reveal it to her. Two bodies as gray as fear, two eyes as blue as the clear sky. We, too, must return to the belief that the sky can be nothing but blue.

If we asked a child to draw us a sky, it would color it blue. For children there is no way the sky could not be that color, unless it is a night sky, but night-time is scary for children. The darkness looks dark and scary, but in their eyes the brightest day is preserved.

This intervention aims to stimulate a thought, a smile, a concept capable of intervening in the daily chain of thoughts without asking for anything in return, without asking for an apology or permission. For this reason, the school is the best place to imprint this memory. It is a reminder to the generations of today and tomorrow to take up the missions of peace and love that motivated Korczak’s life, his principles of justice and truth, his concept of work and of equal rights and duties, so that his cause, strengthened by the constant hope for the future, can have eternal continuity.

ALTRO