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Serie A chiefs have been slammed for their latest anti-racism campaign.

Italian football has been at the centre of a series of shocking racist incidents in recent months.

Alongside on-field incidents, the clash between Inter Milan and Roma, which saw Romelu Lukaku and Chris Smalling face off, was branded ' Black Friday ' by newspaper Corriere dello Sport.

In an attempt to combat the spate of racism incidents, Serie A have introduced a series of initiatives, including a particularly set of distasteful art work.

Artist Simone Fugazzotto created the presentation, which featured three monkeys in motifs as its centrepiece.

Fugazzotto uses chimps and apes throughout his paintings and explained his latest work, which has drawn criticism for appearing to fuel racist taunts.

(Image: Twitter)

"With this trio of paintings, I tried to show that we are all complex and fascinating creatures, who can be sad or happy, Catholic, Muslim or Buddhist.

"But at the end of the day, what decides who we are is not the colour of our skin.

“I only paint monkeys as a metaphor for human beings. We turn the concept back on the racists, as we are all monkeys originally. So I painted a Western monkey, an Asian monkey and a black monkey.”

(Image: SIPA USA/PA Images)

The work has unsurprisingly been slammed with the campaign appearing to highlight the issues that Italian football has.

One user on social media, wrote: "Absolutely awful execution of an important message.

Another posted: "This is distasteful, an absolute disgrace.

A response to the artwork, read: "I wish I were making this up. How many people do you think this went through, from executives to designers to marketers, and no one thought to stop it?!"