Artwork Detail

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Unknown

Artist: Napolitani, Livio

Object Date: 1964

Medium: Ceramic on black granite

Imperial Dims: Overall: 252 in.

Department(s): Public Library

Supervisorial District: 2

About the Artwork:

Commissioned for the Gardena Library and dedicated on December 5, 1964, this ceramic tile mosaic mural by Livio Napolitani is set into seven slabs of black stone and hung above the Library’s main entrance. The mural presents the Western development of communication through forms of writing. Beginning on the viewer’s left; a handprint symbolizes pre-civilization cave paintings. The mural then moves to representations of Egyptian Hieroglyphs, the invention of the phonetic alphabet, the development of the European printing press, and concludes with a picture of a modern woman reading aloud to a child. A quote from the Roman philosopher Pliny runs below the mural’s images. It states, “Were it not for books human culture would pass into oblivion as quickly as man himself.”