By ELISABETTA POVOLEDO
MILAN — A judge on Monday acquitted a celebrated graffiti artist of defacing public property, a case that drew attention because Milan’s city hall had pressed its legal action at the same time that it had been sponsoring exhibits featuring his art.
The artist, Daniele Nicolosi, 28, better known as Bros, was acquitted on a technicality. But the verdict did not cheer his defense team, which had been hoping for an acquittal that clearly recognized Mr. Nicolosi’s colorful street scribbles as art.
“We would have preferred a ruling that established that no defacement had taken place,” Guido Chiarloni, one of his lawyers, said Monday afternoon.
City hall — which had asked for €18,000, or $22,700, in damages — seemed surprised by the ruling. It had won previous claims against other graffiti artists.
Deputy Mayor Riccardo De Corato said in a statement that “Mr. Bros,” a “so-called exponent of street art,” had been fortunate.
The artist had been charged in two cases. The judge ruled Monday that in one case, the statute of limitations had expired while in the other, the formal notice of legal action had not been received.
A spokesman for the deputy mayor said the authorities had not decided whether to appeal. But Mr. De Corato said Milan would continue to pursue graffiti artists and would begin to deploy video cameras for the task.
Mr. Nicolosi’s case became a cause célèbre for an art form that had yet to find a comfortable place in Italian cultural agenda.
“It’s schizophrenic to ask an artist to show the very art that you are holding him criminally responsible for doing on the streets,” Mr. Chiarloni said. “In evolved countries, artists like Keith Haring or Basquiat or Bansky are protected, not whitewashed.”
The case occurred as Italy’s center-right government increased penalties — new fines of €10,000 and a two-year prison sentence — for anyone found defacing property. In the past two years, Milan has brought charges against 70 graffitists and is asking for civil damages in four current court cases.
“We were thrown in with other security measures as though we were some sort of threat about to attack,” Mr. Nicolosi said during an interview in his underground garage studio in Vanzago, outside of Milan.
Italy’s National Antigraffiti Association estimates that graffiti artists cause €750 million of damage each year. Milan has spent €35 million since 2006 cleaning it from city walls and the local police force has a special anti-graffiti squad of 18 plainclothes officers whose job is to track budding artists.
Though he recognizes that not all graffiti are alike, Andrea Amato, the antigraffiti association’s secretary, seems unmoved by arguments of artistic merit. “The problem of Bros, who could well be the new Michelangelo or Giotto of the 21st century, is that if the work is not authorized, it is an act of vandalism, and the consequences must be paid,” he said. “It is pointless to get into a question of esthetics. And even then opinions can differ.”
Supporters of Mr. Nicolosi disagree and posit that the city would have better served the public by pursuing artists that scribble haphazardly rather than someone with an artistic résumé under his belt.
Even so, not everyone believes that the path currently most taken by city administrations is the best way to deal with the problem.
“The city throws away millions of euros each year cleaning up graffiti, but still you have graffiti. Perhaps the city should ask itself whether it is getting the desired results,” said Pierfrancesco Majorino, a municipal counselor in Milan with the opposition Democratic Party. “If you know 20-year-olds you know that a fine isn’t going to stop them.”
Mr. Nicolosi agreed. “The idea of striking one to educate 100 seems a little retro, don’t you think,” he said.
The real issue, he said, is that adopting a policy of cracking down without offering alternatives to young people wanting to express their creativity “creates a clash that leads to bad graffiti,” he said.
actual article: Italian Graffiti Artist Acquitted on Technicalities
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