Tributes paid to activist and Nobel laureate Dario Fo

The death of 1997 Nobel Prize for Literature winner Dario Fo (90) has prompted a swathe of warm tributes from figures in Italian public life.

The controversial playwright, actor, intellectual and political activist died in Milan’s Sacco hospital following a respiratory crisis provoked by a long-standing lung problem.

"Italy has lost one of the great protagonists of the theatrical, cultural and civil life of our country," prime minister Matteo Renzi said.

“His sense of satire, his innovation, his work in theatre and his immense artistic versatility represent the lasting heritage of a great Italian.”

Fo first attracted international attention in 1970 with his play, Accidental Death of an Anarchist, a work based on railway worker and anarchist Pino Pinelli who mysteriously fell to his death from a fourth floor window in a Milan police station in December 1969.

Pinelli had been held for questioning following a bomb attack in Milan in which 13 people were killed.

Controversial

Pinelli’s death became even more controversial two years later when the senior police officer who had conducted his questioning,

Luigi Calabresi

, was himself killed, allegedly shot on a Milan street by leftist movement

Lotta Continua

.

Accidental Death of an Anarchist illustrates a fundamental tenet of Fo's work: his art overflowed into political activism.

He campaigned for years for the release of the three leftist activists imprisoned (wrongly in his opinion) for the killing of Calabresi.

A big, energetic man who wrote more than 80 plays, Fo, along with his wife and lifelong companion Franca Rame, produced his own version of anarchic theatre.

Throughout his work flowed a constant, disrespectful and often hilarious criticism of those in positions of power and public office.

Bitter criticism

Along with Rame, he staged performances not only in conventional theatres and on TV but also in striking factories, at university sit-ins and in prisons.

He and Rame, who died in 2013, were often the objects of bitter criticism. After one of their TV shows, the Vatican described it as "the most blasphemous show in the history of television".

More sinister was the 1973 incident in which Rame was kidnapped, tortured and raped by five neo-fascists, allegedly on the “informal” orders of Italian police.

When, to his surprise, Fo was awarded the 1997 Nobel Prize for Literature, he said: “Some of my friends, writers, famous artists, when interviewed by radio and TV, have said that the biggest award of all should go to the Swedish Academy who had the courage to give this prize to a court jester. Yes, indeed, your awarding of this prize is an act of courage that borders on provocation . . .”