The Collection of Applied Arts was established in the Museums of the Province of Salerno, thaks above all to numerous generous donations. In this way, there have been added to the Province's Museums the prestigious collections of fabrics, painted glass, as well as ceramics –for the most part exhibited in the Villa Guariglia Ceramics Museum in Raito di Vietri sul Mare-- created by foreign artists on Salernitan territory. In the archaic south, artistic movements assumed stronger dimensions, from primitivism to secessionism to orientalism and cubism: an extraordinary moment of artistic syncretism witnessed the coming together of indigenous creativity and technical skills with the major cultural ferments of Europe in the early twentieth century. If one thinks about how the hundreds of artists and intellectuals who passed through, or lingered, or worked in our province were bearers of the great artistic movements of their time, and who would leave their influential mark on the cultural activities of the past century, it is easy to understand the great fortune that our area had in seeing “brought home” the seeds of the most prominent “isms” of Twentieth Century Europe. And thus the South of Italy, precisely because of its archaic and primitive qualities, became a crucible of cultures. To foreign artists, most of them exiles, dissidents in regard to the totalitarian regimes of the epoch, the Salernitan territory offered on the one hand a human and natural repertory of great force, and on the other the profound resources of a land that has always been a crossroads of diverse peoples and ethnic groups. Autore dei testi:Matilde Romito con la collaborazione di Silvia PacificoTraduzioni e voci:Italiano – voce Matilde Romito - Editing audio Associazione Culturale PrismaInglese – traduzione e voce Erich Nicholson - Studio Pippolaticomusic di Luca BechelliImmagini:Tutte le immagini sono di proprietà della Provincia di Salerno, autore Gaetano Guida