Italian
Art, Memory, and Rights Intertwined in the Story of Marco the Horse, a Symbol of Freedom as Care
MOGLIANO VENETO (TV) – The presence of the traveling sculpture of Marco the Horse in Mogliano took me back in time, with a touch of nostalgia. The sculpture originated from a petition by the patients of the Psychiatric Hospital of Trieste, addressed to the president of the province, who was then politically and administratively responsible for the hospital. The horse, known by everyone as Marco, used to pull the laundry cart of the asylum and had grown old. The institution was preparing to replace the old cart with a motorized vehicle, and Marco was destined for slaughter.
It was then that the patients of the asylum signed a petition requesting that the horse be retired and cared for until his natural death. Their request was granted, and in 1973, the sculpture representing Marco was created. It became a traveling installation with the purpose of raising public awareness about the need to close the mental hospitals and restore freedom to the many who were then confined: sick people who were not cared for but merely kept under custody. The intention was to protect them from a society that would abandon them, when in reality, society was protecting itself from them.
In 2024, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Franco Basaglia’s birth, I wrote an article published in the magazine Spirituality and Quality of Life by Opera Don Orione, titled The Duty of Freedom. In it, I briefly described what happened in those years when the mental hospitals were closed thanks to the great insight and will of the clinician and reformer Basaglia, who would have deserved the Nobel Prize in Medicine. His contribution was essential to the development of psychiatry as both a medical and humanistic discipline.
There is no care without freedom, just as there is no freedom without care. To care, in medicine, means to restore the dignity of a free person to the patient. And so, the horse of the “mad,” which now travels through squares around the world, represents and reminds us of the freedom that each of us must demand.Art, Memory, and Rights Intertwined in the Story of Marco the Horse, a Symbol of Freedom as Care
MOGLIANO VENETO (TV) – The presence of the traveling sculpture of Marco the Horse in Mogliano took me back in time, with a touch of nostalgia. The sculpture originated from a petition by the patients of the Psychiatric Hospital of Trieste, addressed to the president of the province, who was then politically and administratively responsible for the hospital. The horse, known by everyone as Marco, used to pull the laundry cart of the asylum and had grown old. The institution was preparing to replace the old cart with a motorized vehicle, and Marco was destined for slaughter.
It was then that the patients of the asylum signed a petition requesting that the horse be retired and cared for until his natural death. Their request was granted, and in 1973, the sculpture representing Marco was created. It became a traveling installation with the purpose of raising public awareness about the need to close the mental hospitals and restore freedom to the many who were then confined: sick people who were not cared for but merely kept under custody. The intention was to protect them from a society that would abandon them, when in reality, society was protecting itself from them.
In 2024, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Franco Basaglia’s birth, I wrote an article published in the magazine Spirituality and Quality of Life by Opera Don Orione, titled The Duty of Freedom. In it, I briefly described what happened in those years when the mental hospitals were closed thanks to the great insight and will of the clinician and reformer Basaglia, who would have deserved the Nobel Prize in Medicine. His contribution was essential to the development of psychiatry as both a medical and humanistic discipline.
There is no care without freedom, just as there is no freedom without care. To care, in medicine, means to restore the dignity of a free person to the patient. And so, the horse of the “mad,” which now travels through squares around the world, represents and reminds us of the freedom that each of us must demand.
