Alberto Greco
Albertus Grecus XXIII, 1962

the art merchants, critiques and art galleries. I would like to die today and return to meet the Vivo Ditos. I would like to live in the only eternity that I trust: the moment when I discover something”.

In 1962, he performed an “action”, tracing graffitis all over the historical downtown district in Rome: La pintura e’finitta. Viva el Arte Vivo-Ditto. Greco (Painting is over. Long live Vivo-Ditto Art. Greco). He had already accomplished a similar action in Buenos Aires in 1961, with posters glued to murals where he had printed with large letters: “Greco: the most important Informalist painter of America” and “Greco, how grand you are!”

Greco moved to Italy in 1962, but he had to leave Rome due to a heretic theater play –a Live Art act– titled Christ 63, which he presented with Carmelo Bene and Giuseppe Lenti. A magazine had published his picture, naked from the waist down. He was accused of blasphemy.

In a fragment of the Gran Manifiesto-Rollo del Arte Vivo-Dito, written in Piedralaves in 1963, Greco pointed out some characteristics of Christ 63:

“...Judas betrayed Christ due to sleep. Mary Magdalene would be played by a high class American prostitute friend of Lenti, who was called at four in the morning to ask her if Carmelo could go to sleep over, but this Mary Magdalene did not give a hoot about Christ nor anybody else. He then shouts at her: ‘Bitch. Whore’, she hangs up on him. For this reason Mary