Art is serious business. But it also has a playful side.
Here a Pietrasanta craftsmen and artists have been working for decades, making a living from their artistic production, embellishing and enriching churches, palaces, villas, monuments and museums all over the world, from Tuscany to Rome, to the United States and Thailand.
Handing down the trade and its secrets from father to son, from teacher to workshop pupil, a figure that however is disappearing. But as I walk around theBarsanti area, a small world of marble, bronze and colored stones enclosed within Pietrasanta, I cannot help but think of the not only decorative or celebratory side of art, but also creative. I am reminded of the first approaches to art that you have as a child, such as pongo, watercolors, tiles or colored plastic beads to compose designs or necklaces.
In this district we work closely, while creating different works. Casts for statues, mosaics, marble figures, bronze or terracotta. But in the end the light I see in the eyes of every craftsman and artist is the same: it is passion. They want to capture our attention and intrigue us, happy to tell what they do, how they do it, what it will become and where it will go. What you see from the outside is just a dusty road with reproductions of statues and scattered pieces of metal and stone .. then you enter each of the workshops and discover a world.
We meet the Sicilian artist Girolamo Ciulla, who after a trip to Egypt has developed a particular fondness for alligators and Egyptian figures.
This year he created the image for the Versiliana Festival (in Marina di Pietrasanta, it is organized every year in summer with a rich program of shows).
We also get to know another famous artist, Maria Gamundi, a Venezuelan, who loves to depict female bodies with exotic faces in her sculptures, and she talks about it staring at us with amused eyes, almost studying us.
La Lucarini Foundry where we then go and 'where the works are materially created on the project of the artists. After having solved a problem with the oven, which died after the storm of the previous night, they tell us about the complicated procedure to create each plaster and silicone cast, where the metal that will become the final work will then be poured, according to the casting method "a lost wax ”(a technique already used by the Etruscans). Among the various works waiting to emerge from the cast, we see models by Botero, one of the many artists who collaborate with the Foundry.
We then meet two of the more experts and in-demand mosaic artists from around the world, Piero Giannoni and Alberto Da Prato, who create beautiful arabesques, meticulous decorations and portraits for important characters. They show us the photo of the delivery of the mosaic portrait to Papa Francesco. On the tables and on each shelf there are thousands of colored squares, each divided according to the shade of color and size. They tell us to collaborate with the Versiliana Park children's program. Even after having shipped their creations to the world, they go and teach the art to children.
Art is serious, meticulous, but also fun and chaotic. Like all beautiful things.
