Vittorio Sgarbi: Italian minister stuns audience with vulgar language and sexual boasts at art event

A sex-crazed Italian minister has been urged to resign after he claimed he had slept with 1,500 women and used misogynistic language during an art gallery event.

Vittorio Sgarbi, a junior culture minister in Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government, shocked attendees at an event in Rome when he used a derogatory term in reference to women and praised his own penis.

The 71-year-old, who is a controversial art critic, has dated a number of adult film stars and was friends with the late Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, known for his ‘Bunga Bunga parties’, who died last month. at the age of 86

Although the event at the MAXXI national museum of contemporary art in the Italian capital took place last month, images of Sgarbi’s comments have only just surfaced.

In the video, he is sitting on stage bragging that he had slept with ‘nine’. [women] a month’ and praising his penis as an ‘organ of knowledge’, but admitted he did not know the exact number as he does not have a ‘penis counter’.

‘In a moment he [French author Michel Houellebecq] He told me that there is a moment in life when we only know one organ: the d*ck’, he said, addressing the Italian rock singer and speaker Morgan, and the gallery’s president, Alessandro Giuli.

‘The d*ck is an organ of knowledge, that is to say of penetration, it serves to [make us] understand,’ he told the crowd.

The June 21 event was to mark the summer opening of the MAXXI art gallery.

At one point, Sgarbi received a phone call onstage and barked, “Who the hell is this?”

He called whoever he was talking to a ‘cuckold’ and bragged about how many women he had slept with the person over the phone.

The junior minister also claimed that Berlusconi, who had died just over a week before the event, had slept with “fewer than 100 women” in his lifetime, something Sgarbi described as a “tragedy”.

At one point, the controversial critic launched into a tirade about a conversation he had shared with the French novelist Houellebecq.

“At a certain point, when you turn 67, the prostate appears and you have to deal with this fucking bitch that you have never met in your life,” he said.

‘The dick goes and the prostate comes’.

Morgan asked Sgarbi: ‘How many women have you slept with?’

Sgarbi replied: ‘I don’t have a penis counter, so I don’t know, but I can answer you as the great Califano (Italian lyricist), and I can estimate an average of three a month and when he was active. it was even nine or twelve a month.

‘So add 1,500, minimum.’

A 45-minute video of the minister’s comments circulated in the Italian media, including the La Repubblica newspaper.

The publication reported that 44 of the 49 employees (mostly women) at the MAXXI gallery signed a letter urging their president to stand up for his values.

The La Repubblica report later drew criticism from Italian politicians, with Italy’s Five Star opposition party calling for his resignation from the government.

They called his comments “serious and sexist”, while centrist political leader Carlo Calenda called Sgarbi a “disgrace”.

‘If your goal was épater le bourgeois [impress the bourgeois] you’ve got the wrong century,” Calenda said. You don’t surprise us, you bore us.

A prominent film director and author, Cristina Comencini, who was due to speak at MAXXI on July 4, said she would no longer do so, citing the minister’s comments and “the way he talked about women.”

Gennaro Sangiuliano, the Italian culture minister, said he wrote to the gallery in Rome to ask for details about his undersecretary’s appearance, adding that there was no room for any form of “vulgarity” in the venue.

Sangiuliano said that sexism and profanity are “inadmissible in all contexts,” particularly “in a cultural space and from someone who represents institutions.”

He said that ‘freedom of thought, protected by our constitution, is sacrosanct but must never be vulgar.’

“Respect for women is a constant in my life,” he added.

For his part, Sgarbi has doubled down on his comments and has refused to resign.

He has complained that his critics were leftists trying to cancel him, saying he was merely quoting Houellebecq in his praise for his penis.

In a later interview with La Repubblica, he noted Mozart’s love of bathroom humor, sarcastically declaring, “Let’s censor Mozart.”

He claimed that his outburst was a “show between two actors”. “Morgan asked me how many women he had had and I told him,” she said. It is freedom of expression.

Asked if he would resign, he told the publication that demanding his resignation over the matter would be “censorship, true fascism.”

Sgarbi is understood to be in an ‘open relationship’ with 50-year-old actress and model, Sabrina Colle, which has been ongoing since 1998.

He himself is a celebrity in Italy and has been mayor of several cities. He is currently the mayor of Arpino, in the Lazio region.

In 2012, he was ousted as mayor of the Sicilian town of Salemi after he failed to acknowledge mafia interference in his cabinet.

Sgarbi has praised Berlusconi’s legacy as Italy’s longest-serving post-war prime minister, which critics say heralded a new era of seedy politics.

You have said ‘without Berlusconi today, we would not have Giorgia Meloni’, who is the first woman to serve as Prime Minister of Italy.

Berlusconi died in June and is remembered as a media mogul and billionaire, but also for his series of scandals, including his ‘Bunga Bunga’ sex parties.

He was once accused and convicted of paying for having sex with a 17-year-old girl, Moroccan exotic dancer Karima El Mahroug, but was eventually acquitted.