"SINGUERLÍN or ABOUT CAPITALISME" Painting

I’ve always liked the worker districts. There was one of them standing as a backdrop of the large clearing where we used to play every afternoon, just in front of my home, in the suburban Padua of the postwar of my childhood. It was a bunch of grey mansions, made with dark brick, of the age of ‘20s. On the branches of a chestnut tree grown at the border of the clearing, among all the kids of the neighbourhood, we built our own “Tarzan hut”. Later, in the industrial Milan of my adolescence, I remember that the great worker districts were considered as a legendary place: the poetical QT8 with the Star Mountain, designed by Piero Bottoni; the high and white towers of the Gratosoglio, by the BBPR architects; the Gallaratese, with the very avant-gardist complex Amiata Mount, designed by Carlo Aymonino and Aldo Rossi. Afterward, studying architecture, the teachers showed us the images of white and thin worker districts of the Social Democratic Rationalism, Germans and Netherlands, from the Bauhaus or the De Stijl schools. Much later, when I moved to Barcelona, I discovered this worker village called Singuerlín, harmoniously climbing at the slope of a green hill, on the bank of the Besós river. It seems a toy, like the constructions my son used to make assembling the small coloured bricks of Lego. To achieve the enchantment, the elliptical crown of the buiding volumes is centred in the block of the steaming Cacaolat factory, the hot drink that, combined with cookies, represents the sweet morning comfort of every child. For the record, the name of the district comes from the namesake family, the first settled on the slope of the green hill. They were merchants in lingerie: a merchandise really delicate and quite coquette. In any case, this tale of worker districts looks like reawaking my ancient Marxist soul, for too long time sleeping.