The large oil painting constitutes the altarpiece of the parish church of St. Pius X in Cagliari. It was commissioned from artist Foiso Fois (Iglesias 1916 – Cagliari 1984) by the then parish priest, Ottavio Cauli, who closely accompanied the artist in the ideational process, providing him with solid theological. biblical support. The work, whose gestation lasted seven years, was inaugurated on September 24, 1977. The artist expanded and refined an idea formulated 30 years earlier, in which he depicted a tragically tortured partisan. The crucifix constitutes one of the artist’s last and most challenging works, in which, through a style with an unmistakable signature, which combines an effervescent colorism with a suffered adherence to reality, he arrives at an original iconographic invention that was able to combine tradition (Christ in Sorrow, Pantocrator, Shroud) and novelty (Cosmic Christ who sums up in himself the signs of the Paschal Mystery, Death, Resurrection, Ascension to Heaven).
The work fits into a specific strand of contemporary art, in which the theme of the crucifixion is juxtaposed with the experiences of war and the denunciation of torture (see, for example, Manzù’s Door at St. Peter’s).
