Monument to Giacomo Matteotti, Rome

The Monument to Giacomo Matteotti is an abstract sculpture, meant to memorialize this anti-fascist politician, murdered on 10 June 1924 as he walked near this spot on Lungotevere Arnaldo da Brescia, near the Ponte Pietro Nenni, in Rome, Italy.

The monument is situated beside the Lungotevere, on a small semicircular green plot, built as a terrace above a series of stairs leading to the Tiber riverbank.

The sculptor is Jorio Vivarelli (1922-2008): the bronze memorial has two parts: one a tall slender spire, resembling an unopened flower, or pistol, or lance-leaf shape, or a flame[2] Along the ground is a tangle of organic forms, compared to roots or a bramble or a knot of bones.

In a letter to the Giacomo Matteotti Foundation, the sculptor indicated the horizontal element ... through the exasperation of form and matter, wants to signify maceration and physical destruction, understood in a universal sense, in a tragic moment in history.

The vertical element signifies the ideal ascending towards space, through a sprouting, pure, lyrical form, a symbol of clarity and hope.