Inaugurated on November 22 at the Diocesan Museum of Molfetta, the exhibition, strongly desired by the daughters Maddalena and Antonietta Salvemini and by the wife Antonia Pisani, retraces the artistic research of the Molfetta painter Salvatore Salvemini starting from the 1960s, going through the crisis of the 1970s with the birth of the theme of "Roots", to arrive at a synthesis that concludes with the last completed painting, a self-portrait, dated 2005. 

Thirty-six works coming from private collectors, but also from the Metropolitan Pinacoteca of Bari Corrado Giaquinto, from the Municipality of Bari and from the Municipality of Molfetta, from the Beniamino Finocchiaro Association and from the Cattolica Popolare. Not on display is a rare youthful portrait from 1946. 

The curators Gaetano Centrone, professor of Art History at the Albertina Academy of Fine Arts in Turin, and Ignazio Gadaleta, former professor of Painting at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, have selected the works on display, offering the viewer a complete view of Salvemini's artistic research. According to Gadaleta, "Salvemini is the one with whom painting becomes impetuous, becomes of social commitment, perspectives are broken, brushstrokes are agitated, the material becomes turbulent, the colors become bright. The opposite of the previous, based on a cloying harmony". 

Puglia thus rediscovers one of the protagonists of the renewal movements that marked the art and society of the territory in the second half of the 20th century, between the crisis of peasant civilization and struggles for the rebirth of the South, an art of civil commitment, with ethical implications and a profound reflection on the human soul. For this reason, high schools have been invited to visit the exhibition: art becomes participation in the civil and cultural life of one's environment. "We rekindle the lights on an artist who was the undisputed protagonist of Puglian art and Southern art in the 1960s and 1970s - Centrone asserts - Salvemini has configured the crisis of a certain way of understanding painting traditionally intended and therefore a new pictorial language for the narration of a new man". 

The exhibition is under the patronage and support of the Diocese of Molfetta-Ruvo-Giovinazzo-Terlizzi and the Diocesan Museum Foundation, with the patronage of the administration of the City of Molfetta and the financial contribution of the Regional Council of Puglia.