The essence of Henraux: expertise and relationships
AC H ITECT UE DESIG NA T RR R
MARMO
Annual Magazine
Issue 11, 2023 April
Editor in chief Paolo Carli
Editor
Costantino Paolicchi
Deputy Editor Aldo Colonetti
Editorial Coordinator
Eleonora Caracciolo di Torchiarolo
Coordinator Manuela Della Ducata
Editorial Staff
Eleonora Caracciolo di Torchiarolo, Manuela Della Ducata, Nicola Gnesi, Anastasia Marsella
Graphic
Silvia Cucurnia, Thetis
Editor Henraux SpA
Printers Grafiche G7 sas, Genova
Contributors
Roberto Bernabò, Edoardo Bonaspetti, Eleonora Caracciolo di Torchiarolo, Aldo Colonetti, Lara Conte, Manuela Della Ducata, Fiammetta Griccioli, Lucien Kayser, Barbara Musetti, Costantino Paolicchi, Eugenio Venezia
Translations
Arcadia International Language Service (Pisa), Romina Bicicchi, Daniel Olmos
Photographers
Rodin Museum Photografic Agency, Paris (Christian Baraja, Jérome Manoukian, Hervé Lewandowski), Archivio Henraux, Archivio Nicolas Rostkowski, Andrea Bartolucci, Riccardo Benassi, Birk Enwald, Roger Gain, Nicola Gnesi, Yana Marudova, Sebastian Mittermeier, Agostino Osio, Lorenzo Palmieri, Studio Vesotsky
Cover Nicola Gnesi
“Printed under the auspices of Henraux SpA”
Registration no 3/2017 - 24/02/2017 of the “Registro stampa Tribunale di Lucca”
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6 60 40 50 16 30
THE SKY ROOMS
Costantino Paolicchi
EDITORIAL
Paolo Carli
RODIN AND HENRAUX: BEFORE MARBLE TURNS INTO SCULPTURE
Barbara Musetti
LIVING MARBLE
Eleonora Caracciolo di Torchiarolo
FEMALE SCULPTORS AT HENRAUX IN THE SIXTIES
Lara Conte
AIRSIDE PROJECT FROM THE DEVELOPER NAN FUNG’S POINT OF VIEW
Eugenio Venezia
THE FIFTH EDITION OF THE HENRAUX INTERNATIONAL SCULPTURE PRIZE
Edoardo Bonaspetti
72
BEAUTY IS EVERYWHERE, IF YOUR GAZE IS FREE
Aldo Colonetti
80
88
THE HENRAUX COAT OF ARMS ON THE FAÇADE OF FLORENCE CATHEDRAL
Costantino Paolicchi
COLLEZIONE HENRAUX 1960-1970
Editorial Staff
96
DESIGN OF THE SENSES. THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY ALLÉNO & RIVOIRE IN PARIS
Manuela Della Ducata
104
SAURO LORENZONI. MARBLE, A LIFELONG COMPANION
Roberto Bernabò
114 126
50 HUDSON YARDS, NEW YORK Editorial Staff
MAN TIME SCULPTURE REMEMBERING THE SCULPTOR LUIGI MORMORELLI Costantino Paolicchi
HOLDING DUST, IN TUNE WITH NATURE
DINEO SESHEE BOPAPE TALKING WITH LUCIA ASPESI AND FIAMMETTA GRICCIOLI
Fiammetta Griccioli
DESIGN IN BIANCO ALTISSIMO MARBLE
Lucien Kayser BULLETTIN
BY PAOLO CARLI PRESIDENT OF HENRAUX AND HENRAUX FOUNDATION
2022 has been an important and frenetic year for Henraux.
It was the year when it was finally able to celebrate its history and glorious achievements over two hundred years, hoping to continue for at least as many more.
It was the year of the fifth edition of the Henraux International Sculpture Prize, which inaugurated a new facility for the candidates’ presentation and selection. In fact, was a curatorial committee – this year composed of Lorenzo Giusti, Fatima Hellberg, João Laia, Luca Lo Pinto, Lucia Pietroiusti, Yasmil Raymond and Zoé Whitley – that identified and invited the shortlist of finalists, and it was a second jury - formed by Edoardo Bonaspetti, Vincenzo de Bellis, Letizia Ragaglia, Eike Schmidt and Roberta Tenconi – that selected the winners.
Three artists, Nikita Gale, Lorenza Longhi and Himali Singh Soin, won the fifth edition. “The three projects”, emphasises Henraux Foundation director Edoardo Bonaspetti in his article in this issue, “stood out for their significant degree of artistic and technological experimentation, and for their ability to address central themes of our present.”
These three awards make me particularly proud because they have given me back the sense of how dealing with contemporary art involves exploring and deepening the present and acquiring new tools to understand it.
And because they represented a very personal challenge in understanding contemporary expressive languages that are sometimes as dense in content as they are rarefied in form. For me, dealing with stone, with marble, you can understand, was quite a conundrum.
In the hands of the artists, marble has effectively dissolved, it has become the opposite of what it has always represented in history and our minds: matter, and permanence. With them, marble became
evanescent, became spiritual matter, became sound, became dust, becoming a work of art from waste material.
As I wondered about these languages that we sometimes feel are distant, Aldo Colonetti’s illuminating reflection came to Marble’s editorial office urging us: the aesthetic dimensions of things not only depend on the work we look at but also on us.
Consider Duchamp who took everyday, utilitarian objects out of their everyday context and declared them works of art: he made us look at the world with a new gaze. Similarly, we might think of the large geometric volumes of different marbles placed in Henraux’s large square not as materials for architecture, design or sculpture, but as objects that have aesthetic value in and of themselves.
A new and free gaze, then, that emancipates “things” from their functions and sees them for what they are.
Three winners, we said. Three women won the Henraux Sculpture Prize. This is not a fact to be underestimated, although it would be nice to stop paying attention to it. But we know very well that the world of art was one of many that until the mid-20th century was almost entirely foreclosed to women. The world of sculpture then, with a narrative that has always seen it as an activity suitable for those with the physical strength to tackle it, still more so.
Not so in Henraux. Between the 1960s and the 1970s, Lara Conte recounts in her contribution, the stories of Rosalda Gilardi, Maria Papa, Alicia Penalba, Alina Szapocznikow, but also Louise Bourgeois, were intertwined with that of the company, thanks in part to the visionary planning of Giuseppe Marchiori. Supported by important artistic qualities, these sculptors found a place where they could express themselves freely in Henraux, where they could self-determine,
exercising sculpture also as a political choice and social consciousness, undermining prejudices, each in the specific direction of her personal relationship with material and work.
2022 was also the year of the major Collezione Henraux 1960-1970 exhibition, realized thanks to the collaboration with Intesa Sanpaolo and the thoughtfulness with which Director Michele Coppola and Dr Stefano Barrese, whom I thank, embraced the project and made it possible. An exhibition that brought together more than twenty sculptures that were separated in 1973, partly acquired by the collection of Banca Commerciale Italiana, now Banca Intesa Sanpaolo, and partly remaining in Henraux.
After being exhibited at the Gallerie d’Italia in Milan in June and July, the precious body of works was displayed until September under the beautiful roof of the old sawmill at the Querceta site, a fascinating relic of 19th-century industrial architecture.
In addition to works by Jean (Hans) Arp, Pietro Cascella, Rosalda Gilardi, Émile Gilioli, Jacques Lipchitz, Morice Lipsi, Joan Miró, Isamu Noguchi, Maria Papa Rostkowska, Giò Pomodoro, Antoine Poncet, Branko Ružić, François Stahly, Georges Vantongerloo and many others, the exhibition – curated by Edoardo Bonaspetti –presented documents, archival photos, models and reproductions organized in thematic nuclei chronicling the vital context in which the sculptures were created, the birth of the Henraux collection and the extraordinary example of corporate culture set by the company.
As is well known, there have been many artists who have passed through the history of Henraux.
In the current issue of Marmo, we pay tribute, through Barbara Musetti’s accurate text, to one of the greatest, if not the greatest: Auguste Rodin.
The correspondence between the sculptor and Jean-Bernard Sancholle Henraux returns us to two profiles with strong personalities and, above all, immense expertise and professionalism.
The history of Henraux, however, has not been defined only by the presence of these great characters but has been the fruit of the daily, patient, determined work of dozens of men and women, of workers who, through their experience have made the realisation of the visions of artists, architects and designers possible. In the column “I maestri dell’Henraux,” Roberto Bernabò interviews Sauro Lorenzoni, who tells us what it means to work alongside the great masters – Moore, Marini, Gilioli – and to make their projects a reality. Honour to our precious artisans.
Art has taken up almost all of this editorial, but I would like to mention that 2022 and, to some extent, 2023, were also the years in which our brand Luce di Carrara did an enormous job of renewing its catalogue under the wise direction of Art Director Attila Veress. In his vision, marble becomes a companion of everyday life by declining not only in the complement of furniture but also in wall coverings and finishes, allowing our gaze to rest on beauty in every corner of the home. We, therefore, wanted to give credit to such work, which required great creativity and professionalism, by dedicating the cover of this issue to it.
Finally, in closing, I would like to mention the texts of Marmo’s editor, Costantino Paolicchi, who gives us three contributions this year that are a perfect blend of knowledge of the history of the company and the territory and great care and attention to the people who have built this territory. So I thank him for bringing us back, after the many magnificent digressions that this issue contains, to the essence of Henraux, to its founding themes: expertise and relationships.
THE SKY ROOMS
BY COSTANTINO PAOLICCHI
BY ANDREA BARTOLUCCI
A photographic exploration that aims the lens on the aesthetic and metaphysical sides of the marble quarries present in the Apuan Alps. Far from denying fundamental environmental protection, Bartolucci – through his images –exalts the beauty of these landscapes, suggesting new paths in the perspective of a proper and harmonious relationship between productive activities and the land.
PHOTOS
Rigo quarry, Arni
Le stanze del cielo1 (The sky rooms) is a publication that proposes, through the photographic research of Andrea Bartolucci, a tour on and within the Apuan Alps dedicated to the environments and landscapes of the marble quarries that, having been subjected for more than two thousand years to the work of men, have marked the mountain range with an exclusive character, arousing – yesterday as today – the admiration of visitors, travelers, artists and entrepreneurs from all around the world.
Andrea Bartolucci conducted his work over a lengthy period of time, visiting both operational and long-abandoned mining sites in the mountains of Carrara and Versilia, identifying aspects of relevant scenic, environmental, cultural, and anthropological interest. His photographs – the result of the consolidation of solid technical training combined with exemplary artistic and human sensitivity, and an assiduous frequentation of the Apuan Alps – interpret the light, colours, architecture and geometries produced in the mountains by centuries of human labour.
Generally speaking, in dealing with the compositional themes that marble quarries suggest, authors since the second half of the nineteenth century have been strongly influenced by human presence, situations related to quarrying techniques, and the different phases of the production cycle, paying particular attention to the characters
that animate this “micro-universe”: quarrymen, technicians (“tecchiaioli”), wire saw operators, squarers and sledge drivers (“lizzatori”). Thus, the photographs emerge as living testimonies to quarry work and the technological changes that have profoundly transformed the Apuan environments and landscapes since, at least, the early twentieth century.
Conversely, Andrea Bartolucci deliberately omitted the human presence: his photographs tell of the great silence in the mountains when the quarries are idle, either because they are abandoned or because they are temporarily closed, for example, on public holidays. It is then that without the noises – often deafening – of block-cutting machines, mechanical shovels, cranes and trucks, the quarry reveals an absolutely exceptional, almost metaphysical dimension, where it is possible to grasp the signs and stratifications of work in the cuts produced in the mound by the helical wire (and today by diamond chain block cutters), in the vertical walls that draw marble geometries, in the incredible architecture that delimits the “sky rooms”, places capable of communicating profound emotions, of soliciting creative reflections and tensions, and of generating moments of elevated spirituality.
In the silence of “his” quarries, Bartolucci’s lens works a wonder of transfiguration, revealing how environments born of toil and sorrow, where men still put their lives at
Cervaiole Quarries, Monte Altissimo, Seravezza
Left, light geometries
Diaccetto quarry at Passo del Vestito
Wire cuts in an Arnetola quarry (Vagli)
Right, lights and shadows in Rigo quarry
risk to earn their bread, become cathedrals of pure beauty built by their removal, until they penetrate into the heart of the mountain where everyone can identify his or her personal sanctum sanctorum and draw unknown energies from the light reflected on those mirror walls, of a blinding white that dilates the space. Bartolucci has succeeded so much in reestablishing dialogue between the pristine nature of the Apuan Alps and the quarries that are progressively transforming them. Bartolucci claims, without taking sides, the meanings and values that the quarries, despite everything, bring to the Apuan chain as an additional and in many ways exclusive heritage in terms of history, culture and landscape. Quarries have been a primary component of the culture and tradition of the marble towns for over two thousand years: I paesi della pietra piegata (The countries of folded stone)2
After all, the Apuan Alps are far better known in the world for their marble quarries than for their naturalistic
peculiarities. A fine exhibition set up in the evocative surroundings of the Arkad Foundation in Seravezza, in which Bartolucci participated, entitled Cava (Quarry) had as its subtitle La cava di marmo bianco come un’opera d’arte scolpita nella natura (The white marble quarry as a work of art carved in nature).
As its theme, this exhibition had the marble quarry viewed as just such a work of art “… to be admired and protected, with an aim of appreciating and enhancing the unquestionable artistic beauty and charm that has always emanated from the marble mountains.”
This does not mean ignoring the importance of environmental protection in the perspective of a correct and harmonious relationship between productive activities and the territory, but it is intended to indicate new possibilities for the enhancement and development of the Apuan Alps in the reconsideration of quarries inclusive of an aesthetic point of view.
NOTES
1 A. Bartolucci, Le stanze del cielo. Sulle tracce di Michelangelo , Bandecchi&Vivaldi Ed., Pontedera 2012.
2 The title of a book of mine published by Container Editions, Firenze 1981.
RODIN AND HENRAUX: before marble turns into sculpture
BY BARBARA MUSETTI
The very special relationship between the great sculptor Auguste Rodin and Henraux through Jean Bernard Sancholle Henraux. A rereading of the correspondence shows details of a professional, and sometimes personal, relationship between two very exacting men, each an expert in his own field, sharing a common passion for marble.
fig. 1
Henraux depot in Querceta
The block does not favour the sculptor The block is against him.
”
Thomas Mann, Das Gesetz, 1944
At the pinnacle of his personal hierarchy of taste, the artist put Attic marble, known for its tight texture, followed by Parian marble, which had a rougher texture but a translucent white colour, then white Carrara marble, used by Romans, and the marble from Seravezza.
Marble according to Rodin Marble, the noble material of statuary art, the first heading in the artistic alphabet that all of Rodin’s plastic language is built upon.
Yet the learning curve of Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) was all but academic. Born in Paris in 1840, the artist was rejected three times at the exam for the Academy of Fine Arts so he had to settle for the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs, which trained stone cutters who mainly dealt with architectural ornamentation. A bitter disappointment for an ambitious young man who aspired to the fate of great statuary art. His exclusion from the academic system had not only deprived Rodin of a structured training process, a network of professional contacts and state commissions, but also, and above all, of the opportunity to apply for the prestigious Prix de Rome, a fouryear residence at the French Academy in Rome where he could have studied ancient art first-hand. So, for him it was an uphill struggle all the way. But what might have initially been a serious detriment turned out to be instead an extraordinary opportunity of intellectual freedom, which relieved the sculptor of the regulatory academic standards. As a self-taught artist, as well as practising his hand, Rodin practised his eye too by studying works of art that he almost bumped into in the halls of the Louvre or in some antique shops, where he started to buy a few little ancient statues with his first earnings.
And it was precisely the primacy that Rodin very soon attached to ancient art in his training process that remarkably affected his understanding of the sculptural material. The famous ancient marble statues that the sculptor literally worshipped had influenced his approach to the material. Actually, at the pinnacle of his personal hierarchy of taste, the artist put Attic marble, known for its tight texture, followed by Parian marble, which had a rougher texture but a translucent white colour, then white Carrara marble, used by Romans, and the marble from Seravezza, which Rodin loved mainly because of the way Michelangelo – the other pole of Rodin’s aesthetics – had used it. Rodin had experienced that aesthetics of whiteness, soaked with physical pain in the unequal struggle with the block, since
the first years of his career when, awaiting praise, he translated other people’s creative ideas through his chisel. He had to wait at least until the Eighties to receive the first, important public commission, The Gates of Hell1 which, though unfortunate, revealed his creative genius to the whole world. That was the watershed moment that gave Rodin, the simple stonecutter, a veritable artistic identity of his own. Commissions, mainly for busts, started to proliferate, and a list of marble suppliers was added to his list of assistants. Reportedly, at least thirty of them worked as traders of different kinds of products from 1880 to 1916. As to Italian marble – basically statuary white – at first Rodin went to some stonecutters from Carrara who worked in Paris and sold marble too2. In the early 20th century, his list came to include the name of Henraux, of which Rodin became a long-standing but hard-to-please customer.
Rodin in Henraux’s orbit
Trade relations between Rodin and Henraux have been documented over a span of approximately fifteen years, from 1901 to 1915.
Despite the loss of the company’s Italian archives, a reading of the correspondence between the sculptor and the Apuan company, now in the Rodin Museum in Paris3, helped us retrace the interweaving of their relationships. Such correspondence includes approximately one hundred documents, a precious corpus where commercial papers (bills, delivery notes, technical documents) sit next to more personal letters about the Henraux family. Rodin fell into Henraux’s orbit when the company was managed by Jean Bernard Sancholle Henraux (1874-1931), one of Roger’s four children who founded “Héritiers S. Henraux” with his sister Margherita4
Jean Bernard took the helm of the company in 1890 after the premature death of his father, whose work he continued. Along with a process of technological revival of the company he contributed to working out a veritable plan for the international promotion of marble from Monte Altissimo, taking advantage of his family connections with France as well as of the rich colony of foreign artists who were in Tuscany back then, first and foremost
British and American ones who chose Apuan marble for their most prestigious commissions5. But it was in France that the marble from Monte Altissimo became most popular, second only to Italy, through a smart promotional campaign, started by his father, with the young pensionnaires of the French Academy in Rome for their end-of-year sculptures, a practice that they obviously continued for years to come. By the end of the Nineties, Versilian marble was at the pinnacle of its French reputation. Statuary marble from Mount Altissimo was regarded as the most valuable and most expensive marble from the Apuan mountains. Henraux was its undisputed ambassador.
It can therefore be legitimately assumed that the meeting between Rodin and Jean Bernard Sancholle Henraux must have taken place precisely in Paris – where Henraux had an agency6 – circa 1900, when the Exposition Universelle brought about 56,000,000 visitors to Paris. It would have been unlikely for the Versilia-based company to miss the opportunity to be there, as such event would have been an outstanding promotional channel. For Rodin such period coincided with the pinnacle of his success after the triumph of his exhibition at Pavillon de l’Alma. Actually, in that year, a few metres from the premises of the Exposition Universelle, the artist had wowed everyone with a memorable yet unusual monographic exhibition7. The great media coverage of the event had led to an exponential increase in the number of his commissions,
interrupted only by the outbreak of the first world war. Too old and unable to carry out all commissions, the sculptor had expanded his network of assistants, an army of stonecutters, figure makers, hewers and suppliers of marble, who allowed Rodin’s “sculpture factory” to keep its pace. In this well-oiled system, marble had become most essential than ever, as a necessary tool for the creation and reputation that Rodin wanted to be known for.
Because, even if for decades – in fact since the time of the Gates of Hell – the organisation of the artist’s studio had relied on sharing the stages of artistic production with his assistants, the sculptor’s reputation was inextricably (and paradoxically) linked to his personal work on marble.
The relations between Rodin and Henraux got stronger in Paris through their progressive and ever friendlier visits. Along with his wife, Marie Bernières Henraux8, the businessman visited Rodin several times in his home at Meudon, on the outskirts of Paris, where he happened to see first-hand the master and his many stonecutters at work in the studio. His wife, a young budding sculptor, instantly saw a protective figure in the artist and did not take long to ask for his patronage for her career. The relations between Rodin and Henraux finally settled in the autumn of 1901 during a semi-official trip of the artist in Italy9. After a short stop in Turin from 23rd to 25th October, invited by critic Giovanni Cena, and probably one in Venice where in that year the young Biennale
exhibition had dedicated a monographic exhibition to him, Rodin had gone to the Tuscan coast to look for marble, accepting Henraux’s invitation to see the quarries of Seravezza. The sculptor, who had spent a few days in the family villa from 28th to 30th October10, had basically devoted himself to looking for a block to translate the famous group of The Kiss into. It is one of the many works developed by Rodin from the characters of the Gates of Hell. The figures of Paolo and Francesca, featuring in the Gates as bas-reliefs, took on a self-contained and all-round shape in 1887. With its seductive theme and dynamic composition, the group met instant success. The French Government commissioned an enlarged marble version of the group, which Rodin took almost ten years to make. In 1898, the group was exhibited for the first time at the Salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. Such work was finally consecrated by another two marble versions after 1900: the first one, made between 1901 and 1904 for Edward Perry Warren, is now in the Tate Gallery in London; the second one, made to order for the Danish collector Carl Jacobsen between 1901 and 1903, was eventually donated to the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek of Copenhagen. The block of outstanding quality and huge size (H 200 cm) bought in Seravezza was most likely used for the latter version of the work. Ready since February 1902, the marble was finally sent on to Paris on 17th March 1902, after a memorable haul from the quarries down to Seravezza11
The correspondence between Rodin and Henraux provides us with lots of valuable details that show not just the effective operation of a company but also the two men’s double, and sometimes unexpected, expertise in each other’s trade. Sometimes the blocks were not bought at the artist’s express request but at the suggestion of Henraux who sent him samples of grade-1 statuary marble (the best quality). If Rodin was happy with that, then the block was taken down from the quarries to the depot in Seravezza and then shipped by rail to Henraux’s depots in Paris where Rodin’s stonecutters went and checked its quality. Such operation could take twenty to thirty days, depending on the state of the roads that led up to the quarries and the railway.
As frequently mentioned in their correspondence, the sculptor had ninety days to settle his payments, “net”. Despite Rodin’s insistence, Henraux did not offer any discounts on white statuary marble, just a mere 2% off coloured marble and slabs12. The cost of carrying it from the depot to the artist’s studio was borne by the Italian company while the unloading of the block was paid for by the buyer. However, “accidents” were not infrequent, and in those cases Henraux tried to be fairly flexible and helpful with his best customers, as proven by the following anecdote. In October 1907, one of Rodin’s
trusted stonecutters, Victor Peter, went to Henraux’s depot in Paris to ask to have the plinth of a block bought by the sculptor sewn off. During such operation a flaw was found on the sides of the block that was completely invisible from the outside. Because of such “vein”, which would have compromised the result of the work, the block was unusable. The stonecutter asked Monsieur Polet, Henraux’s righthand man in Paris, to replace the flawed block but he refused “out of respect for the company’s principles”13. At Rodin’s insistence, the veined block was shown to Henraux himself who, as an alternative option, proposed to buy another block with a special discount of 60fr “by reason of their good relations”14
However fruitful15, their mutual cooperation was not always so easy. A reading of Henraux’s letters suggests that the businessman spoke to a thoughtful man who did not define himself as an “artist” but as an “expert”.
As a former stonecutter, Rodin had had many opportunities to interact with marble brokers and suppliers and had trained his eye in the matter, the potentials as well as all the risks of the block. Competent, resolute, sometimes unyielding, Rodin rarely settled for second best, open to compromise. Mindful of Michelangelo’s lesson, the sculptor did not look for marble, he looked for the block that would disclose his sculpture. While Rodin rarely went to
select the marble on the place himself, as in the unrepeated and extraordinary case of The Kiss, a small army of trusted assistants16 was instead regularly sent over to Henraux’s depots in Seravezza (fig.1) or in Paris to look for the good block according to the master’s extremely meticulous instructions. They were usually led by the so-called saumons (fig. 2), a sort of casts, usually made of wood or plaster, in the size of the future sculptures or scale models au dixième17, which helped track down not just the best quality block but also the most cost-effective one, big enough to make the sculpture without wasting too much material18
But the perfect overlapping between the idea and the material was a mirage that only the artist’s utopian stubbornness could believe in. Because, if sculpture is the art of removing, the initial block cannot but be larger than the model. The marble cutter knows that, but the sculptor sometimes forgets, and this may influence him to such an extent he may doubt the legitimacy of the very existence of his work. The monument to Puvis de Chavannes is a case in point19
In 1891, Rodin made a bust for his painter friend, Puvis de Chavannes (1824-1898), one of the most famous artists of the time next to Monet and to Rodin himself. Following the painter’s death in 1898, the sculptor was commissioned to make a commemorative monument. A long and
complicated period began for the planning of the work which materialised between 1899 and 1903. The result was a weird plaster model (fig. 3), an assemblage with the existing bust resting on two capitals, placed on a table with the Genius of Eternal Rest leaning on its side (fig. 4). Over one metre and eighty centimetres tall, this figure picks apples from a tree, the symbol of both the artist’s fame and the peace he deserved to enjoy. Having defined the model, Rodin started to look for the block. On 13th March 1903, Henraux wrote from Paris to the sculptor to announce that the saumons had been sent to Seravezza.
“You’ll see – the businessman reassured him – the first measured block will be the one for you and that will be as soon as possible! If there’s any in storage then you’ll have it soon, otherwise it will depend on “Nature”; but it will reward you, I’m sure, by giving you what you are asking to have so quickly. Too bad for the plan that gets in the way of the block in storage, ten centimetres less and that would have been it”20, concluded Henraux, as if covertly suggesting to alter the model. But statuary marble is rare. In the quarries, people were working at a new, promising seam, the businessman reassured him, and the block would have soon been found.
And it was found, as early as the end of the month, but unfortunately it was “flawed”21. And the search went on. On 11th July, Henraux couldn’t but report yet another unfulfilled hope to Rodin: “Yet another block that had looked promising failed [...]. But rest assured that, as soon as we find the block your Genius will be released out of, it will leave Serravezza straightaway and hopefully it won’t take much longer”22
In Henraux’s reassuring and almost poetic words, the Genius seemed to be waiting to be released from the block like the Genie out of the artist’s magic lamp, he just needed to ask. So, after many long
fig. 5
To show Rodin how unfair his reaction had been, Henraux calmly and meticulously embarked on a technical demonstration, supported by no less than a diagram that would not look out of place in a treatise on sculpture.
searches, at last on 3rd October 1903 an outstanding 2.45 metre block was sent to Rodin for his monument to Puvis, just one month after sending him another precious 1.75 metre block for his Eurydice23. But quite unexpectedly Rodin turned down both pieces as too big. Though always willing to meet the sculptor’s demands, it seemed Henraux did not want to give in this time:
“You know how difficult, I’d say impossible, it is to find blocks that are precisely suitable for the model but we will keep on looking… Sometimes we leave a bit extra marble to make sure the sculptor can find his figure. We will do all we can to please you but we can’t do what can’t be done. [...] The stonecutters would want us to send them blocks cut down to the exact centimetre and charge the same price to the sculptor with the greatest benefit. This is not our job; we must supply a block which can contain the figure while trying to please the sculptor as much as we can. Our prices are based on the larger size of the saumons”24
And, quite unexpectedly, to show Rodin how unfair his reaction had been, Henraux calmly and meticulously embarked on a
technical demonstration, supported by no less than a diagram (fig. 5) that would not look out of place in a treatise on sculpture: “[…] If we take a figure that has, just imagine, a side like the one shown in the sketch below, you can easily see that we cannot take our measurements on a-b but on A-B; otherwise what shall we do with the cuttings ? […] If you compare the size of the saumons with those of the pieces you’ll see that you will find no faults with the Eurydice; as to the Genius they are larger. But here’s why. You were in a great hurry and this was the only block that matched your measurements. So, we sent it, thinking you would have been happy to have it, even if bigger; we were wrong. Moreover, it’s been quite along time since we authorised Monsieur Dejaiffe to cut it at our expense, following your stonecutter’s instructions to cut it to the size you wanted. You know how glad we are to see our marble serve your fine pieces of sculpture and that we are even prepared to make a few sacrifices to please you. So I kindly ask you to go to Monsieur Dejaiffe and you will see that with the formal instructions I received to cut this block down to size, you will easily come to an agreement. You asked me if we
Letter to Rodin from Henraux Sancholle,November 6, 1903, Paris, Rodin Museum, Henraux dossier
will soon have any other block of marble for the Genius, but I don’t expect this to happen for at least 4 to 5 months, given the state the quarries are in right now. So, I really hope you will be satisfied with the two blocks we sent you […]”25. But Henraux’s efforts were once again in vain. The shipments of the blocks of marble to Rodin have been documented all through 1906 but there is no mention of a
specific work in progress. At last, a letter dated 3rd August 1907 announced that a block of statuary marble had been sent to the stonecutter, Dominique Mathet, for the Monument to Puvisat the considerable cost of 5000 fr.
NOTES
1 For an overview of the events that led to the development of the work, cf. L’Enferselon Rodin , F. Blanchetière (dir.), catalogue of the exhibition, Paris, Musée Rodin, Norma, 2016.
2 For a more exhaustive review of such practices, see: Musetti B., Gli emigranti del marmo. Scultori apuo-versiliesi a Parigi tra la fine XIX e l’inizio del XX e secolo , tra arte e socialità , in S. Berresford (dir.), Carrara e il Mercato della Scultura. Storia di Gusto, Cultura dell’Arte e Cultura Material eattraverso la Produzione Artistica Apuanatra 1870 e 1930 in Italia, Europa e altrove , Milano, Motta Editore, 2007, pp. 212-216.
3 Paris, Rodin Museum Archives, Henraux file (here in after referred to as PAMRH).
4 On the foundation of Henraux,cf. Tenerini A., L’impiego dei marmi dell’Altissimo nella scultura dal 1821 all’inizio del Novecento , in « Marmo », 2021, pp. 40-53.
5 Ibid., p. 44.
6 Henraux’s premises in Paris were at 22, rue de la Tremoille, in the VIII arrondissement. As from 1906, Henraux’s headed paper mentioned a new address, 21 rue d’Allery, in the XV arrondissement, closer to the marble depots and the sculptors’ studios. Henraux supplied statuary marble, white marble from Mount Altissimo, Blu Fiorito, Blu Turchino, breccia from Seravezza.
7 On the origins of the exhibition, see Rodin en 1900. L’exposition de l’Alma , A. Le NormandRomain (dir.), catalogue of the exhibition, Paris, Éditions du Musée Rodin, RMN, 2001.
8 As many young female sculptors of the time, Marie Bernières Henraux (1876-1964) was attracted to Rodin’s plastic art and the Pygmalion’s role that the sculptor had played formany female artists – first and foremost, Camille Claudel – for whom having access to the world of sculpture was still quite difficult. Even if she was never an apprentice in his studio, Marie still benefited from the sculptor’s advice, especially after her marriage to Sancholle Henraux. Her career developed over a span of about twenty years during which she was involved in a lot of exhibitions at Salon des Indépendants, at Salon des Tuileries and in several galleries around Paris. Her work, which has not received any real critical attention yet, is partly held in the Municipal Museum of Tours. Cf. René É.-J., Dictionnaire des artistes contemporains 1910-1930 , Paris, Art & Édition, 1930, vol. 1, p. 122.
9 For a more in-depth review of Rodin’s Italian journeys, see Musetti B., Rodin vu d’Italie. Aux origines du my therodinienen Italie (1880-1930) , Paris, Mare et Martin, 2017. Ibid., p. 271.
10 PAMRH, Henraux’sletter to Rodin dated 17th March 1902.
11 PAMRH, Polet’s letter to Rodin dated 26th September 1906.
13 Id.
14 PAMRH, Polet’s letter to Rodin dated 24th August 1907.
15 Rodin’s buying from Henraux about thirty blocks of grade 1 white statuary marble in different sizes for the considerable
Maybe it was Rodin’s doubts about the very nature of his work – an assemblage that was far ahead of its time –, the high cost of making it or simply the artist’s inability to see the work “crop up” from the wrong block.
The hard life of the block, before it turns into a sculpture.
But the monument never saw the light of day26. Only the figure of the Genius found itself translated into marble as a work that grew completely independent of the monument (fig. 6). The reasons are still fairly unfathomable.
sum of approximately 20,000fr have been documented between 1901 and 1915.
16 Between 1901 and 1907,the correspondence regularly mentions the names of Monsieurs Dyaiffe, Mengue, Muller as the recipients of blocks for Rodin. As from 1907, such job is passed on to two of Rodin’s most faithful and hard working stonecutters, Victor Peter and Dominique Mathet. In 1908, Charles Despiau is mentioned too.
1 7PAMRH, Polet’s letter to Rodin dated 31st December 1906.
18 Blocks used to be bought by sculptors by weight, although part of the material was inevitably discarded in the process. It was therefore in the artist’s interest to find blocks that matched the size of the final work as best as possible since the start, so as to minimise the loss. That’s why French sculptors often asked to rough-hew the blocks in situ before shipping them. By reducing the weight, they could reduce the shipping cost.
19 Monument to Puvis de Chavannes , 18991903, plaster model, 187x110x76,5 cm, S. 05417, Paris, Rodin Museum.
20 PAMRH, Henraux Sancholle’s letter to Rodin dated 13th March 1903.
21 Ibid., letter dated 31st March 1903.
22 Ibid., letter dated 11th July1903.
23 Moulded in 1887, sculpted in 1893. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art.
24 PAMRH, Henraux Sancholle’s letter to Rodin dated 6th November 1903.
25 Id.
26 The figure of the Genius is still there, made of marble as a self-contained work.
LIVING MARBLE
BY ELEONORA CARACCIOLO DI TORCHIAROLO
BY NICOLA GNESI
The new catalogue by Luce di Carrara follows the lines of a vision that became a project and eventually a product: providing solutions for marble cladding, interior design and accessories for a cosy, perfectly matched look one can find in any area of the house. A vision turned into reality with the help of two outstanding partners: RasoParete and Olivari.
Texture/Wall: Quilt in Portofino, designed by Attila Veress
Speaker: Beosound A9 courtesy Bang&Olufsen
PHOTOS
Texture/Wall: Reverse in Portofino, designed by Stefan Scholten Chaise longue: Volute , by Archea Associati
“Marble” is not just a word, marble is not just a thing. Marble is an aesthetic and an ethic, a way of looking at and understanding the world.
Featuring as much in public places as in private spaces, used to make everyday items as well as valuable artefacts, to mark outstanding moments and everyday moments, marble “is an anthropological symbol of permanence”1 that runs through all our lives, from side to side.
This crystalline stone material, which is as valuable as it is common, is not just the embodiment of beauty, sometimes it is the most appropriate answer to a design problem.
Since its inception, Luce di Carrara, the brand by Henraux that combines tech and industrial innovation with the world
of architects, designers and artists, has found in marble’s talent for connecting the “high” with the “low”, the unique with the commonsensical, the key to revolutionise the world of materials, bringing the versatility of this stone to its epitome.
A revolution that took place first and foremost in the way the materials were discovered, quarried, tested, processed and finished and that is now accomplished in the extended product range, which has come to include solutions for bathrooms, living areas, lighting, cladding, outdoor and indoor décor, using the material to challenge architects and designers to deliberately include it and implement it in their projects.
The result is the opportunity to provide a perfectly matched contemporary look in
Texture/Wall: Veneziana in Elegant Grey, design by Luce Di Carrara Handle: handle in BiancoHX, design by Olivari Door: Cover D , design by Rasoparete
For the interior designers and architects at Luce di Carrara, the challenge was to find consistency in such mindblowing diversity and make the company’s signature recognisable. Their pursuits were inspired by the idea to find a feature that could make these products timeless yet contemporary.
natural stone while pursuing an elegant and elevated design that may be consistently found in every space of the house. Adaptability and versatility are outstanding features, of course, but they are not enough for the ambitious standards of Luce di Carrara. In a world that tends to turn the objects that surround us into self-expressions and that has made “customisation” the operative word in many markets, the Tuscan brand wanted to go the extra mile and find a touch of uniqueness.
It found it in its roots: “Marble is the very symbol of Italianness”, Attila Veress, the brand’s creative director, said, “The beauty of the region, the unique history it is imbued with, the creativity that distinguishes the people who live here are all qualities that belong as much to Italy as to the marble industry. Since the start, we at Luce di Carrara have aspired to translate marble as a raw material into multiple languages, conveying emotions all over the world in a very personal and distinctive way.”
So, Luce di Carrara combines materials, stories and personalities through an accurate selection of every single piece, each one with a texture of its own, a dimension of its own, a story of its own, just as any customer has his own identity, plans and dreams.
After all, one of the strengths of marble is that it never replicates itself into two identical parts with the same shape, the same texture or the same colour; each one has its own story and its own aesthetics. For the interior designers and architects at Luce di Carrara, the challenge was to find consistency in such mindblowing diversity and make the company’s signature recognisable.
Their pursuits were inspired by the idea of creating iconic pieces, the idea, in other words, to find a feature that could make these products timeless yet contemporary. Which is, after all, what distinguishes the great classics from the short-lived objects. Once again, the glorious heritage of marble helped a lot, because of all the materials it is perhaps the one that is most often defined as a “classic” but not in the sense of “traditional”, more as in “never going out of style” and are therefore always modern, forever contemporary.
Inspired by such milestones – adaptability, versatility, uniqueness, iconicness –the creative team of the Versilia-based brand curated a selection of materials by combining the natural stone from the quarries on the Apuan Alps with other special materials from around the globe.
“Our palette combines multiple shades of grey, brown, green and orange”, Attila Veress goes on “to create a range of warm, welcoming colours that stand the test of time.”
When these materials are used in cladding, Luce di Carrara provides a wide range so that the right type of marble can be found for the size and style of the place and the other details that need to be taken into account on a case-by-case basis. Every stone has its own features and once selected it is encoded and organised to make the most of the offering. Every piece can look different depending on the way it is matched, thus enhancing any area, adding details or changing it completely to achieve that perfectly-matched look.
In the belief that spaces and people shape the products and that designer items create the story of our houses and basically of our lives in a virtuous circle, Luce di Carrara looked for companions who shared their vision in a profitable exchange of expertise and who loved the material, especially in a time in which the world seems to focus on immateriality. The collaborations that feature in the brand’s new catalogue are the result of this process.
With the double aim of letting every type of marble express itself and its traits as best as it can whether polished or textured and to create and produce cladding that can adapt to any space while perfectly combining walls and doors into a seamless covering, the ideal partner was found in RasoParete that, with its products, skilfully supported the 12mm slabs of Luce di Carrara, a product that is still unmatched in the industry.
As the designers at RasoParete explained: “It is a cutting-edge system that meets the new requirements of design and function, so that even the doors can be clad in materials that used to be dismissed because of their weight.”
But while it is true that the devil is in
Texture/Wall: Quilt in Tirreno, designed by Attila Veress Bathroom Collection: designed by Federico Peri
the detail, the master’s touch in getting a perfectly matched look was in the idea of having marble even in the handles, the brainchild of Olivari’s creative vision.
The Bau handle was born of the research efforts of two German architects, Nina and Valentin.
They took inspiration from the Bauhaus and the values it stands for and which their studies have been imbued with. Sound features, geometric and sleek lines, an interpenetration of form and function, keen craftmanship in the finishes and in the preciousness of the materials.
The handle was disassembled into three parts, depending on the purpose: a metal pin and a metal lever making up the backbone that conveyed motion and stress; a cylindrical grip in a suitable material dovetailed into the lever, for a steady, effective hold. All scaled and sized to
achieve an overall balance. By trial and error, we decided to select three types of marble: white Altissimo, grey Versilys, Nero Marquina, that perfectly match the finishes of the brass: chrome, matt grey, gold.
“Of all the materials we could use, marble was an interesting option because it can be accurately finished and at the same time it has intensity and uniqueness. A project that Luce di Carrara was exploring has materialised: creating a perfectly matched marble total look and more precisely a wall with a handled door, using one and the same marble”, the designers commented. So, vision, creativity and technique have brought about not just an opportunity to show the versatility of marble but also the reason why it has always had a special place in the history of man.
Texture/Wall: Peak in Versilys, designed by Attila Veress Door: Cover D , Rasoparete Handle: Bau with handle in Versilys, Olivari
Left, Texture/Wall: Column in BiancoHX, designed by Attila Veress Bookcase: Marmeria , design by Archea Associates
FEMALE SCULPTORS AT HENRAUX IN THE SIXTIES
BY LARA CONTE
Symbols of freedom and self-affirmation, the work on stone and the relationship with marble may be seen as political statements and acts of social conscience by female sculptors who uprooted prejudice from the artistic milieus of the time: from pursuing a female perspective on abstract art to the interaction with the learning of the trade and the essential relationships they formed with the local craftsmen.
Left, Maria Papa at work in Henraux, Querceta, 1980
Copyright Archives Nicolas Rostkowski
As part of studies on sculpture, the work of female sculptors needs to be positioned within a new critical discourse to shed light on their relationships, quests and working methods in the places of production. It is from such a new perspective that the plan for the revival of sculpture launched by Henraux in the Sixties in the name of gender equality can be reappraised, while focussing on the female sculptors who worked in the company’s studios. Educational articles and local exhibitions have pointed to the high number of female sculptors who have been in the area since the Sixties, but a real investigation connecting the historical level with the perspective of feminist-theoretical analysis has not been outlined yet. A new field of enquiry can therefore be ploughed, and a new analytical angle can be reached by cross-referencing the sources.
As retraced and studied, in the Sixties the number of international artists working at Henraux, as largely reported in the magazine Marmo, rose steeply. Most strikingly, the company, mainly encouraged by the vision of critic Giuseppe Marchiori, showed to have some consideration for the involvement of female sculptors too. Actually, it was at Henraux that – between the Sixties and the Seventies – the stories of international female sculptors such as Rosalda Gilardi, Maria Papa, Alicia Penalba and Alina Szapocznikow intertwined with each other, but also of Louise Bourgeois who, between 1967 and 1968 was active in the company’s workshops before starting her lasting collaboration with Nicoli in Carrara.
Of the women who worked in the studios and were specifically engaged in sculpting stone, the critics of the time often emphasised the stubbornness they put in their work and the prejudice spread by narrative stereotypes about the struggle of dealing with a technique that was considered to be more masculine than clay or the dimension of shaping, which was usually associated with feminine creativity.
A conference on Louise Bourgeois and Alina Szapocznikow1 recently held in Paris provided an opportunity to retrace the relationship between these two lodestars of international sculpture, starting from a brief but decisive meeting they had in the
Apuan-Versilian district, between Carrara and Querceta, in September 1969. Though, with their network of relationships and frequent visits to lots of places, a meeting in Paris or New York might have sounded more likely, it is important to point out that the setting of their meeting was actually the landscape of the Apuan-Versilian quarries, where both had had their works exhibited at the Carrara International Sculpture Biennales a few times before2.
In 1967, Szapocznikow was invited by Giuseppe Marchiori to make a sculpture for the Henraux Museum’s collection. Like the other female artists frequenting the company’s studios in the Sixties, she had been brought there by the critic whom she had met in the late Fifties while she travelled between Warsaw and Paris.
In December 1967, Szapocznikow was contacted by Henraux and in those weeks she met Marchiori in Paris with whom she agreed to send a cast that the company pledged they would sculpt into marble3. In her letters, Szapocznikow provided instructions on how to enlarge her work and pointed out that she would go and supervise the work on two occasions, first in April, then in June 1968, for a onemonth stay so she could be involved in the sculpting process. Her work, which was added to the museum’s collection (now in the collection of Intesa Sanpaolo), was Grands Ventres, made of Calacatta marble – a white marble with grey veins – though in her correspondence with the company the artist specified she wanted her sculpture to be translated into statuary marble, though the latter was eventually used to make another version of such work, which is now at the Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller in Otterlo. Grands Ventres was designed out of a cast of the stomach of Ariane Raoul-Auval, the partner of Roland Topor, an artist, writer and filmmaker. The two stomachs were enlarged and placed one a top the other in an hourglass-shape, hinting at the inexorable passing of time, from life to death. In a quest between abstraction and surrealism, the marble seems to take on the softness of the plastic materials and man-made resins that featured largely in the artist’s coeval research in sculpture4 A form of research in which the female body turned into a tool of criticism and
Maria Papa at work in the Henraux workshops
Copyright Archives Nicolas Rostkowski
rebellion, a vehicle for pleasure, freedom, sickness and death, closely connected with her autobiography, which was interspersed with dramatic events such as her deportation to the concentration camps of Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsenand then Theresienstadt, and her disease – first the peritoneal tuberculosis she managed to recover from by taking part in an experimental trial on antibiotics that, however, left her infertile; then the breast cancer that led her to apremature death in 19735.
Szapocznikow was back in Versilia in 1969 where she met Louise Bourgeois, also in the Apuan-Versilian district, at the suggestion of Liptchitz, who was working at Henraux, as retraced by Hélène Gheysens, who also investigated the dynamics of the relationships between the two female sculptors in Versilia and elsewhere at a number of meetings that, in the two artists’
correspondence, also involved other female sculptors working at Henraux, such as the Polish artist Maria Papa6 Papa arrived in Versilia through Marchiori who in 1966 invited her to attend the company’s Sculpture Workshop. For the artist, the encounter with marble was a way to take deep roots in Versilia and experience a fist-fighting with the material that broadened her geography and her relationship with sculpture as a veritable watershed moment in her quest. Just like Szapocznikow she too had experienced the trauma of war, though she was spared the tragedy of deportation. After the death of her husband, the Polish politician Ludwik Rostowski, with whom she had rescued many Jews from the ghetto, in 1957 she left Warsaw and moved to Paris with her son Nicolas. There, she started a relationship with the writer and publisher
Right, Rosalda Gilardi, Impossibilità di volare , 1968
Intesa Sanpaolo Collection
Photo: Nicola Gnesi
Alina Szapocznikow, Grands Ventres , 1968
Intesa Sanpaolo Collection
Photo: Nicola Gnesi
of the magazine XX siècle, Gualtieri di San Lazzaro, the nom de plume of Giuseppe Antonio Leandro Papa, from whom she took the name Papa. Around the late Sixties, Papa set up one of her homes in Versilia, where she stopped for increasingly long periods. Her distance from Paris also led her to grow detached from her partner, Gualtieri di San Lazzaro, whom she divorced in 19717 Some photographs show her working on marble blocks at Henraux studios, emphasising the sense of perseverance and effort in learning a technique that would eventually become her way of sculpting marble by cutting straight into it. In an interview for a piece on female sculptors in Versilia, Papa spoke of her work methods: “I start by hand. I go faster with the disk. I do not impose any idea or theme on myself. First, I remove what upsets me the most.
I keep alert until things become obvious. A moment of clairvoyance is going to end, so you have to act really fast. That’s why you have to master the technique. I deliberately complicate things to simplify them later”8. Sauro Lorenzoni, a local craftsman who had worked with Maria Papa at Henraux for years, recalls that the artist did not make clay or plaster casts, she worked straight on the marble out of which she made small sculptures. When she was satisfied with them, she had the figuremakers produce plaster casts out of the small sculptures, and from those she made other marble pieces or enlargements9.
The outcome of Papa’s first season of work at Henraux was showcased at two exhibitions at Galleria del Naviglio, in Milan, in 1967 and in 1972. Those were the years of the first feminist confrontations and, though Papa was not involved in
feminist activism, she actually expressed her freedom and her feminist views by choosing specific working methods and dealing with sexual themes, which she treated in the forms of myth and the surrealist dimension. In the Seventies, Milena Milani spoke of her art and lingered on the themes of her sculptures and the meaning they took within her journey, leaving out the stereotype of female creativity as grace and simpering and shedding light instead on a darker and more troubledside that somehowleads to a new understanding of her marble sculptures. Milani wrote: “Those hard, thorny, sharp flowersthat had nothing soft or elegant about them sprung out of a wide base. They were a sort of challenge. There were sexual hints everywhere. Stern warrior heads in black marble aimed their rostrums at abstract
women that carried their names within a transformative processand the realisation of an identity, as away to self-affirmation by working on the sculpture, through a reading that takes Leda’s perspective of feminist analysis, while emblematic boats, that ultimately were veritable intercourses, rocked men and women wrapped around each other, engrossed in the eternal game of love. A de Sade Venus with a bunch of breasts had the same strength of those sharp flowers, especially the travertine ones, where the stone betrayed the artist’s anxiety.”10
Rosalda Gilardi too arrived in Versilia in 1966 through Marchiori and set up one of her homes in the area. For her, the studio and the home became part of the sculpting process: Gilardi actually chose to set up
Courtesy The Estate of Alina Szapocnikow / Piotr Stanislawski / Loevenbruck, Paris
Photo: Roger Gain
For Alina Szapocznikow, Maria Papa and Rosalda Gilardi, working on stone, the relationship with marble becomes a symbol of freedom and self-affirmation, a political choice and an act of social conscience.
her studio in Versilia as a sort of housecum-studio project and for some time also planned to open a house museum in the garden of her villa, halfway between Forte dei Marmi and Querceta. This was a way to create a dimension of private space as a political space just when other female artists who worked in other contexts and with other methods gave new meaning to the space of their homes as a space for resistance and self-affirmation. Just think of Marisa Merz in the film La conta (1967) where she let herself be filmed at her kitchen table where she also produced her art, like the famous Living Sculpture11 . Rosalda Gilardi faced marble head-on, sometimes leaving the big roughing work to the craftsmen and then going back in at the final stage, to work directly on the stone. Chipping away at prejudice and building genuine relationships with the craftsmen means building a space of trust, going against the sexist stereotype. In an interview in 1980, encouraged to speak of the craftsmen’s mistrust for the women hanging around the studios and the quarry12, Gilardi replied: “There may have been some mistrust at the beginning, when I went to some new place, but then, when they saw me at work, when they realised how professional I was, they buckled down.”13
In her journey of exploration, Gilardi focused on the study of some minor artists who lived outside the grand legends of art history. For instance, her stay in Versilia was an opportunity to draw attention to the biography and art of Giuseppe Viner, a Versilia-born painter whose art had wavered between Macchiaioli and Symbolist painting and had also dealt with social themes that concerned the quarrymen and the quarry landscape14. In
her quest, Gilardi saw a chance to delve even deeper into the history and identity of a place that fascinated her with its landscape, its marble, the mountains and the sea, in an endles surge that led her to rethink the relationship between the centre and the suburbs and to come to terms with an imagery that regarded Tuscany as the cradle of Italian culture as well as with a wilder side of that region, in that geographical offshoot, in that intense relationship with the mountain and the quarry. In her relentless quest between history, modernity and primitivism, the artist delved deep into the identity of that place and alternated journeys to other places: in 1967 she stayed in Paris; in 1974 she was in Latin America to study pre-Columbian goldmaking, jewellery and pottery-making techniques. And such double component may be found in her endless alternation between marble and other stones, such as granite: between the purist attraction for geometric marble and the magic abstraction of totemic granite.
These short lines may suggest how, for Alina Szapocznikow, Maria Papa and Rosalda Gilardi, working on stone, the relationship with marble becomes a symbol of freedom and self-affirmation, a political choice and an act of social conscience that took its cue from placing their research within abstract art and that was fuelled by their relationship with the learning of the trade, which mean interacting and sharing with the local craftsmen, with whom Papa and Gilardi built authentic and lasting relationships that went on for years, undermining prejudice, each one in the direction of her own relation with the material and the work.
Rosalda Gilardi
Courtesy Museo dei Bozzetti “P. Gherardi”, Public Library “G. Carducci”, Pietrasanta.
NOTES
1 In Between: Louise Bourgeois et Alina Szapocznikow , International Day of Study, organised by Université Paris 1 – Panthéon Sorbonne, Université Rennes 2, UR HCA: Histoire and Critique des Arts, HICSA, AWARE, 7-8 October2022.
2 Alina Szapocznikow exhibited her works at the Carrara International Sculpture Biennale for the first time in 1965, and this event too was a great opportunity to investigate the presence of international female sculptors in the Apuan-Versilian district between the Sixties and the Seventies, and more broadly to conduct a survey of the female sculptors who were involved in stone sculpture in the Sixties. The Premio internazionale di scultura città di Carrara was launched in 1957 in the climate of Post-war reconstruction, within a cultural policy that aimed at reviving the use of marble in sculpture as a strategic propeller to overcome the crisis of the stone industry as well as promoting the Apuan district as a tourist destination. In1965, the Award changed its rules and was relaunched as the IV Carrara International Sculpture Biennale The goal was to provide a wide historical overview of international contemporary sculpture with a core of artists that was fairly unusual for the female artists’ shows of the
time. International female sculptors such as Barbara Hepwort, Alicia Penalba, Emy Roeder, Alina Szapocznikow and the Italian Isa Pizzoni were involved. A stand point that inspired the following Biennales too, such as the one of 1969. Many were the female sculptors presented at the event: some of them are all but forgotten now while some are prominent names of international sculpture. In that year, Maria Papa, Rosalda Gilardi and Cordelia Von Den Stein took part in the Biennale, and so did Louise Bourgeois with her work Cumul , made in the Apuan-Versilian district in her early years in the area.
3 Cf. the correspondence between the artist and the company, which is now in Archivio Storico Henraux, Querceta, Seravezza.
4 An article with a photo of the artist working in Henraux’s studio was published in the magazine “Elle”. A photo shoot by Roger Gain was taken on that occasion. J. Monteaux, Alina sculpte ses ventres dans le marbre de Michel-Ange , in “Elle”, 1968, XXX
5 Cf. C. Sylos Calò, Personificare la malattia.
I tumori di Alina Szapocznikow , in “Horti Hesperidum”, a. VI, n. 2, 2016, pp. 323-342.
6 H. Gheysens, Mémoire fragmentaire. Alina Szapocznikow et Louise Bourgeois , 19691973, in “Les Cahiers du Mnam”, 144, Summer 2018, pp. 68-83.
7 Cf. L.P. Nicoletti, Maria Papa. Un destino
europeo , Cortina Arte Milano, Orenda Art International, Milano - Parigi 2009.
8 M. Papa, in Carrare, le marbre dompté par les femmes , in “Express”, undated, print cutting, now in the library of Museo dei Bozzetti, Pietrasanta.
9 From a conversation with the author and Nicolas Rostowski, Pietrasanta, 29 September 2022.
10 M. Milani, La baguette del desiderio , in Oggetto sessuale , Rusconi, Milano, 1977, pp. 183-188.
11 L. Conte, Marisa Merz: sperimentazioni scultoree e filmiche in cucina , in L. Conte and F. Gallo (a cura di), Artiste italiane e immagini in movimento. Identità, sguardi, sperimentazioni , Mimesis, Milano 2021, pp. 11-24.
12 “You started to sculpt twenty years ago, to hang around the foundries and, above all, the quarries. How was this young woman-female sculptor accepted? […] Wasn’t there at least some mistrust for this “weak” being that went and tried her hands at so much bigger things?” B. Corradini, Cronaca di un incontro, in Rosalda Gilardi , from “Prospettive d’Arte”, n. 39, October 1980.
13 R. Gilardi, in B. Corradini, cit.
14 L’omaggio di Rosalda Gilardi a Viner e alla sua terra di Versilia , in Rosalda Gilardi , from “Prospettive d’Arte”, n. 39, October 1980.
AIRSIDE PROJECT FROM THE DEVELOPER NAN FUNG’S POINT OF VIEW
BY EUGENIO VENEZIA COURTESY NAN FUNG GROUP
An innovative commercial development that wants to embrace all the needs of urban life, from shopping to culture, from work to wellness, in complete connection with nature. More than a district, a vision: let’s discover AIRSIDE.
A sketch of Airside lobby
The Nan Fung Group today announced its plan for AIRSIDE, a 1.9 million sq. ft mixed-use commercial development in the Kai Tak area. The flagship project, which set a record HK$24.6 billion land bid in 2017, comprises of a 47-storey mixed-used development building including an over 30-storey Grade A office and a multi-storey retail complex with an interconnected underground shopping street. The total investment in the project will reach HKD$32 billion.
AIRSIDE embraces a new urban lifestyle concept of wholeness, inviting everyone and the community to gather at a place where you can be yourself and connect to others and nature. The development manifests Hong Kong’s contemporary urban metabolism through showcasing experiential retail and leisure spaces, while its sky-high neighbourhood will be where businesses can set their sights on the surroundings and expand their horizons, make new networks and create
Details of the preliminary design for the Airside concourse
Right, a view of the Airside concourse
Thanks to its privileged location, it offers international tenants a leading worldwide network, as well as providing a receptive and commercial space and a diverse work environment. The vertical neighborhood will connect thought leaders and like-minded individuals who will be able to share their work, private life and moments of true well-being.
changes. The authentic streetscape will also be playing host to an array of cultural and entertainment events, allowing for a change of pace, for people to pause and for new perspectives to be developed in the urban everyday lives.
A Place for Wholeness
A New Landmark for the City AIRSIDE is situated at the very heart of the Hong Kong’s CBD 2.0. It will be the tallest building in Kai Tak and thus offer unparalleled views of Victoria Harbour, the Kai Tak Area and CBD 2.0. The 200m high development will have Grade A offices that covers a gross floor area of 1.2 million sq. ft.
AIRSIDE is a significant anchor commercial development in the Kai Tak district. It offers multinational tenants a world’s leading network with its prime location, as well as providing a diversity of work, meeting spaces and supporting facilities. The vertical neighbourhood will connect thought-leaders and likeminded individuals to embrace work, life and well-being. AIRSIDE will be a convener of collaborations for unlimited business opportunities.
Steven Au, Deputy General Manager (Project) of Nan Fung Group said: “With the legacy of the former Kai Tak International airport, the new developments are designed to transform Kai Tak into a vibrant and attractive hub of heritage, commercial, residential, sports and tourism destination. AIRSIDE embraces wholeness encompassing of urban lifestyle, culture, wellbeing and connection to nature through its architecture and building fabric. Nan Fung has seized the crossover opportunities with key stakeholders in the area to lay down a good foundation in supporting the social and sustainable development of our community and city through AIRSIDE”.
Positioned on an Infrastructure Hub At the premium location of Kowloon
East’s infrastructure network and sitting on a public transport interchange for CBD 2.0, AIRSIDE is the hub to connect people from near and afar. It is conveniently linked to the basement of the Kai Tak MTR station, just 2 minutes’ walk from Kai Tak Station Square. Visitors will also pass along the Underground Shopping Street on the way to AIRSIDE. All major communities and nearby facilities are easily accessible on foot through a web of elevated walkways and bridges. With the Shatin-Central Line and Tuen-Ma Line just completed, Central will be just 15 minutes away, and Hong Kong International Airport and the Shenzhen border just 40 minutes away.
Redefining Urban Living
The sense of wholeness encompasses a balance of a wide range of activities, interests, art, entertainment and dining in a sustainable green environment that offers transformative feelings of wellbeing. The 700,000 sq. ft. shopping mall at AIRSIDE offers an authentic curation of experiential retail, worldclass cuisine, and quality-living and leisure experiences. AIRSIDE offers cascading greenery, open-air rooftop, terraces and surrounding grounds that will constitute 33% of the site area. The rooftop garden and the vertical green wall provide moments of escape to fill the heart and soothe the soul. AIRSIDE is also a cultural hub, providing a broad spectrum of cultural programmes to encourage interpersonal engagement and thought exchange within the community.
Architectural Wonders
The AIRSIDE building has been crafted by Snøhetta, an internationally acclaimed architecture and design firm renowned for their unique interpretations of architecture and the surrounding environment. Their design was inspired by the intense fusion of natural elements,
Left, sketches of the Airside project
The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals have been adopted as the design blueprint for AIRSIDE.
Every sustainable design detail has been carefully crafted in line with this framework to make AIRSIDE the first building in Hong Kong to receive five highest green-building certifications.
historic structure, and contemporary urban spaces in Hong Kong. AIRSIDE reflects this by inviting the outside in, while connecting seamlessly to some of the main surrounding features in the area including the Kai Tak Park and the Kai Tak River. The design highlight curated a gently curving façade composed of fluted glass is evocative of the textile that anchored Nan Fung Group’s historic industry, and is present throughout the project from the façade to the interior and landscape design. In this vision, marble helped decorate the main hall of the building. The hall turns out to be as tall and wide as a cathedral, lending an elegant, but not cold, character endowed with a certain softness to the structure. The choice by the designers, for the walls, fell on Versilys marble, a natural stone characterized by a background animated by a mix of delicate greys and a characteristic pattern inclined toward gold, contrasting with the flooring, which was made using an exclusive white marble that gives depth to the environment. The grey tones of Versilys marble amalgamated in a spontaneous and lively way, bestow this special marble with character and distinctiveness.
To emphasize the dynamism that already distinguishes the material, the cladding of the central body was made to resemble projecting pilasters with alternating niches enhanced by points of light, generating an uncommon succession of chiaroscuro.
A Sustainable Vision
In supporting the pursuit of Nan Fung’s mission, the Sustainability Vision, “Do Well By Do Good”, rests on the belief
in interdependence among stakeholders in the society, and it is fundamental to create shared value and prosperity for all, in order to generate sustainable returns to our shareholders. Such vision empowers all our divisions to integrate social and environmental elements into our complete value chain, ranging from financing and investment allocation, supply chain management and procurement, operations, organization and talent development, so as to create ideal win-win products and solutions, maximizing benefits to mankind, while minimizing negative impacts to natural resources and the planet. There are 4 strategic pillars “SEWit” contributing to our Sustainability Vision: Social Cohesion, Environment, Wellness, Innovation and Technology.
AIRSIDE is also advocating a sustainable green lifestyle supported by unique facilities such as Hong Kong’s first ever automatic bicycle parking bay to encourage green mobility; sky farming; automated smart waste sorting and storage; a water-saving and rainwater retention strategy; and efficient centralised district-cooling and indoor air quality awareness that will make it one of the most environmentallyfriendly landmarks in town.
The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals have been adopted as the design blueprint for AIRSIDE. Every sustainable design detail has been carefully crafted in line with this framework to make AIRSIDE the first building in Hong Kong to receive five highest green-building certifications. Nan Fung is striving to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, in alignment with Hong Kong’s Climate Action Plan 2050 set out by the Hong Kong Governmnt.
Transforming the Urban Community
Nan Fung has a keen sense on the rich history of Hong Kong and many fond memories of Kai Tak. In this regard it is supporting the development of AIRSIDE not only as a premium CBD 2.0, but also as a prime cultural hub in Kowloon East. A series of community
engagement activities starting by the end of 2020 will be created and integrated with the development of the wider area along the Kai Tak River, including San Po Kong and Kowloon City, to uncover the heritage of the area, reveal cultural stories and explore a new lifestyle of wholeness for Hong Kong.
Sketches of the Airside project
THE FIFTH EDITION OF THE HENRAUX INTERNATIONAL SCULPTURE PRIZE
BY EDOARDO BONASPETTI
GNESI
As president of the jury, Edoardo Bonaspetti tells us about the new artists selection system for the Henraux International Sculpture Prize and what led the committee to award Nikita Gale, Lorenza Longhi and Himali Singh Soin. To win are the central themes of our time: from environmental urgencies to production dynamics, from reflections on the artwork to social and individual responsibility issues.
PHOTOS BY NICOLA
Lorenza Longhi at Cervaiole’s quarry, Monte Altissimo, Seravezza (LU), summer 2022
The traits that characterised the fifth edition of the Henraux International Sculpture Award are the originality of the research itself, the synthesis of expressive voices and a rethinking of production logic from a more sustainable perspective. The event, dedicated to artist under 40, is aimed at innovative areas of thought and creation and strives to support some of the most lively and current practices today. This commitment was helped by utilising a new selection system for artists involving a curatorial committee (Lorenzo Giusti, Fatima Hellberg, João Laia, Luca Lo Pinto, Lucia Pietroiusti, Yasmil Raymond and Zoé Whitley), whose members
each presented a nomination. The jury (Vincenzo de Bellis, Letizia Ragaglia, Eike Schmidt and Roberta Tenconi) with which I had the honour of collaborating awarded, after a spirited discussion, the proposals of Nikita Gale, Lorenza Longhi e Himali Singh Soin. These three projects distinguished themselves for the significant degree of artistic and technological experimentation, and for the ability to tackle the central themes of our current times. The artists explored a field of research that ranged from environmental emergencies to production dynamics, from reflections on the work of art to issues of social and individual responsibilities.
Nikita Gale in Henraux, summer 2022
Gale’s work turned the traditional idea of marble as a metaphor for solidity and permanence on its head. After recording the noised of extraction and processing processes, the artist created
a sound composition that alternates between rhythmic arrangements and almost unedited field recordings. The tracks were then mounted on cassette tapes, an obsolete medium, which were
Nikita Gale, Marm i, 2022
Nikita
created from marble dust, a very versatile and ductile material.
Lorenza Longhi’s approach rethought the functions and processes of marble treatment in close collaboration with the
departments of the Henraux company. The artist, after careful studies of application in architecture and interior design, chose to put unused or discarded elements to new ends, in a process characterised
,
Lorenza Longhi, Business Card(s)
2022
Right, Lorenza Longhi at Cervaiole’s quarry, Monte Altissimo, Seravezza (LU), summer 2022
Lorenza Longhi, Business Card(s) , 2022
by unprecedented procedures and combinations of materials.
Finally, Himali Singh Soin’s long-term research on polar ice resulted in a twostage project involving the terrestrial antipodes. During the inauguration of the exhibition the creation of the post-colonial arctic island, Blomstrandhalvøya, or NyLondon, has been done using marble dust
in an extended performance ceremony inspired by Tibetan mandalas and accompanied by the percussionist and composer David Soin Tappeser. Singh Soin thus focuses on a process of healing and reparation from the consequences of colonialism and anthropocentric thought, inviting to reflect on the depth of time, transience and impermanence.
Himali Singh Soin, Too Much and Not Enough , 2022
Left, Himali Singh Soin, Too Much and Not Enough , 2022 (performance)
BEAUTY IS EVERYWHER E, IF GAZE IS FREE
BY ALDO COLONETTI
To be conscious that the possibility of grasping the aesthetic dimension of things depends on us and not only on the work we look at. What allows us to see Art is the freedom we retain in our approach to the world. Without the free relationship between the person and the “thing,” design, fashion, architecture and art could not exist.
Marcel Duchamp with his works
It is a freedom that underlies all art and design activity, even when the political and economic conditions appear to be decisive as well as the materials and tools needed to complete a work.
ADA is an acronym conceived by Henraux president Paolo Carli, it stands for “Art Design Architecture,” or the recognising of the primogeniture of the aesthetic dimension over all other values brought to bear by the design disciplines.
Estetica dovunque (Aesthetics everywhere) is the title of the first volume of the complete works of Gillo Dorfles, released by Bompiani in 2022, edited by the writer with an introduction by Massimo Cacciari. In particular, Cacciari points out that: “The importance of his thought is now something firmly acquired at the international level: aestheticism cannot limit itself to a ‘general theory,’ but must measure itself against the concreteness of the artistic product and test itself in its ability to judge not according to abstract meters of values, but in its making, in its construction.”
Some disciplines involve calculations and rules to be memorised, or knowledge and cognitive paths, such as “the science of beauty,” where the rules are to be learned, as we go along with our own experience and subjectivity. Art can go beyond empirical fact to derive a significance that is attuned to each of us.
In other words, a scientist may be able to explain the origin of a rainbow in detail, but certainly not the memories that arise in us from one because they are tied to our subjectivity and freedom.
Art and freedom represent the first condition for making an aesthetic judgment, that is: in front of a sculpture by Michelangelo we are not born “taught”, but we can grasp completeness in even a single particularity, through an intuition that links a particular memory and a specific sensation to a certain form that seems to come from a far. But then, if we lift our gaze to Monte Altissimo where our artist went in search of the best marble, we better understand what it means to give form to an idea through, certainly, a certain sensibility that would never have found its “concreteness” if he had not found the right materials and tools to complete the work.
Art everywhere and in every place implies an awareness that it is up to us – and not only to the artwork – to grasp the aesthetic aspect of things, at all times and in every
experience, even the seemingly most minor in relation to a sacred and museumlike image of art.
The German philosopher Immanuel Kant, who founded modern aesthetics as part of philosophy in the second half of the 18th century, wrote in his seminal work Critique of Judgement (1790) that: “I would also attribute to painting in a broad sense, the decoration of rooms with tapestries, and every beautiful piece of furniture, which serves only to the eye; likewise the art of dressing with taste, rings and snuffboxes. For a flower-bed of different kinds of flowers, a room with many ornaments, including ladies’ clothing, constitute a kind of painting, which, like paintings proper, are there to keep the imagination in a free play with ideas and to occupy the Aesthetic Judgement without any determined purpose.”
It is a freedom that underlies all art and design activity, even when the political and economic conditions appear to be decisive as well as the materials and tools needed to complete a work. The idea remains valid that it is not enough to “produce well” an object, paying attention only to its determining specifics (“functionality” to obtain a product capable of maintaining all those symbolic and aesthetic values that make it unique over time). The aesthetic experience of things is different from the practical functionalities of a specific tool. It must be able to put into action a series of symbolic, ritual and mythical effects, which are not depleted and therefore not consumed in everyday practices of a repetitive nature. If there is no free relationship between the person and the “thing,” in a kind of endless and timeless dialogue, design, fashion, architecture and – of course – art could not exist.
Design makes us rediscover the pleasure of “functional beauty,” just as fashion is capable of reinventing military boots or backpacks by showing them from another point of view-namely, their aesthetic and symbolic dimensions – within a rituality that can revive in a different and completely original way – a “mundane,” everyday object.
It is enough to think of Elio Fiorucci’s aesthetic revolution and the communication of his products carried out – together with
Monte Altissimo, Seravezza
Photo: Nicola Gnesi
the great photographer Oliviero Toscani – in the 1970s and 1980s: bringing the street and its anonymous behaviours, the materials and forms that came from other technological and productive fields, such as plastic, into fashion. It is no coincidence that Fiorucci collaborated with Montedison as the chemical behemoth had sensed that the search for new materials could develop from a completely original new look at the world in comparison to the traditional attitudes of specialists.
As Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus – the world’s most important design school unsurprisingly closed by the Nazis – wrote: “Specialists are people who repeat the same mistakes over and over again.”
At the centre of this pedagogical and design experience was art alongside some of the protagonists of the most advanced artistic research of those years such as Paul Klee, Piet Mondrian, and Vassilij Kandinsky.
From the Bauhaus to the present day, design has made us discover the pleasure of “functional beauty,” just as Marcel Duchamp made us rediscover the
mysterious meaning of even the simplest and most anonymous things, for example, a bicycle wheel, an old typewriter, or the toilet. These are objects where there is always an aesthetic and symbolic value that goes beyond the simple and banal functionality of the product.
Duchamp performs an action that any of us could have done: he chooses an object with which everyone has an instrumental and utilitarian relationship, shifts it out of context, and declares it a work of art. He forces us to look at the object with a different gaze and a different mental mechanism, partially setting aside its utility and thinking of it as an object in itself.
Imagine, just as an example, how many possible Duchamps we might have if we thought of the large geometric volumes of different marbles – positioned in Henraux’s large forecourt – not as materials for architecture, design or sculpture, but as works that have aesthetic value in themselves, not only potentially, but in their own right.
It is as if to say that each of us is an artist and it is enough to set in motion a new and
Marcel Duchamp, Fontana , 1917, ready-made
Left, residential unit in Marseille
Photo: Yana Marudova
freer relationship with things. Then it is thought that draws reality: Fare è pensare (Making is thinking)1
Art, in essence, coincides with our propensity toward freedom untethered from the things of the world; it is a cognitive path, and therefore not at all an academic one which is restricted only to those who know the history of art. The great German philosopher Hegel made this clear in that extraordinary “novel” which is one of the most important works for understanding the world, namely The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807).
Art, for Hegel, like religion and philosophy, stands as a cognitive attitude toward the world under the sign of freedom; namely, attempting to go beyond the finite, even a simple piece of marble, to grasp the infinite, the aesthetic and symbolic dimension that resides in the gaze of a new way of seeing and knowing the world, transcending appearance. Then a pipe is not only a pipe but also a reflection of the relationship between drawing and reality as Magritte taught us; a sculpture by Michelangelo is not only a sculpture as it takes us back to the nature
from which it comes, to the tools with which the artist tries to give concrete form to an idea of beauty. But again, a corkscrew is not just a tool but a story of a person, as in the case of Alessandro Mendini and his Anna G. corkscrew.
Finally, architecture is not just a container, a shelter from natural weather or a defence from the enemy but is self-representative as an absolute and autonomous work. Might this be asserted? Certainly, only in the case of being in front of a project such as that of the architect-designer Mies van der Rohe and the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, wich – since 1968 – has been facing us, hospitable but austere, self-sufficient in terms of aesthetics, able to accommodate any artistic expression and, at the same time, absolutely perfect and autonomous in its composition and materials.
It is as if it were a thinking and autonomous object and not merely a product of man. Therein lies the ultimate meaning of any work of man, yet it all depends on being able to think freely about the things of the world. Art and freedom lie at the heart of the contemporaneous project.
NOTES
1 A. Colonetti and S. Massironi, Fare è pensare. Conversazioni per un nuovo Bauhaus , Electa Editore, 2023
The marble blocks in the forecourt of the Henraux factory, Querceta
Photo: Nicola Gnesi
Left, interior of the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin Photo: Birk Enwald
THE HENRAUX COAT OF ARMS ON THE FAÇADE OF FLORENCE CATHEDRAL
BY COSTANTINO PAOLICCHI PHOTOS BY RICCARDO BENASSI
The fascinating and contrasting history of Florence cathedral’s façade was finished three centuries after Arnolfo di Cambio dismantled the medieval decoration that initiated the work. The front of Santa Maria del Fiore now bears the Henraux coat of arms, obtained in recognition of the generosity and increasingly close ties between the city of the lily and Seravezza.
The Henraux coat of arms on the façade of the cathedral of Florence
Details on the façade of Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence
Pope Leo X (born Giovanni de’ Medici), on the occasion of his first visit as pontiff to his home city on November 30, 1515, expressed his desire that work be done on the façade of the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, the decoration of which Arnolfo di Cambio had begun at the end of the thirteenth century and which had continued until the fifteenth century but remained unfinished. He was particularly impressed by the artificial façade made of shaped and painted wood by various Florentine woodworkers, such as the triumphal arches and other ephemeral scenery erected in Florence for the event. During the second half of the 16th century, Grand Duke Francesco I de Medici ordered the old decoration to be dismantled. The sovereign’s intention was to endow the greatest Florentine temple with a new façade stylistically adapted to modern tastes, but it did not progress beyond the intentions, and the destruction of the old was not followed by the creation of a new face.
At the end of the seventeenth century, on the occasion of his son’s wedding, Grand Duke Cosimo III decided to restore the decoration of this monument by having a large mural painted depicting a mock architectural façade. This decoration survived for a century and a half, and can still be spotted, although by then greatly degraded, in early 19th-century photographs.
Under the rule of Ferdinand III, the question of decorating the façade of the cathedral returned to the forefront through the initiative of the architect Giovanni degli Alessandri, president of the Accademia di Belle Arti (Academy of Fine Arts) and director of the Uffizi. He was the first to present a plan for a neo-Gothic façade, but it remained unimplemented. A proposal made in 1831 by architect Gaetano Baccani, who was responsible for the modernization of the building, was also disregarded.
A decisive step forward was taken in 1842 when the Association for the Façade of the Cathedral was created, which was also concerned with raising the necessary funds to carry out the undertaking. Helping to stimulate debate around the initiative was the construction of the neo-Gothic style
façade of the Basilica of Santa Croce, designed by architect Niccolò Matas. Matas himself developed an architectural proposal for the cathedral that had the effect of extending the debate beyond regional borders: it was during those years that the drawings of Swiss architect Johann Georg Müller (1822-1849) arrived in Florence, proposing six neo-Gothic façade hypotheses, inspired both by cathedrals beyond the Alps and the cathedral of Orvieto. During the years 1842-44 Müller accompanied Rudolf Merian, a wealthy Basel man, on a trip to Italy during which he visited monuments in Tuscany, Rome and Sicily. It was a fundamental experience that led him to confront questions of art theory. Those years also saw the birth of his interest in the project to complete the façade of the Florence cathedral, which occupied him until his untimely death. Design concerns were interrupted by the Risorgimento uprisings and then resumed in 1859, when the Association was reborn under the name of the Promoting Deputation. The following year Victor Emmanuel II laid the foundation stone in a purely symbolic ceremony: the façade would not be built until many years later. In 1861 a competition was announced in which numerous Italian and foreign architects participated, proposing solutions inspired mostly by medieval sacred buildings. The designs were examined by a special committee of experts, but no winner was ever declared.
A large collection of the architectural drawings sent to the various commissions over the decades is preserved in the Archives of the Opera del Duomo of Florence, and a portion of them is on display in the relevant section of the Museo dell’Opera.
A new competition was announced in 1864, which produced more than forty designs: the architectural proposals largely suggested the style of Gothic façades of French cathedrals, others drew on Italian basilicas, and still others were eclectic in taste. Among the fifteen designs that were selected, Florentine architect Emilio De Fabris was chosen as winner, it envisioned a neo-Gothic façade, inspired by the cathedral in Siena and that of Orvieto, crowned by three spires. A heated
Santa Maria del Fiore and the Baptistery of San Giovanni, Florence
Photo: Sofia Dalle Luche
discussion arose around this solution, however, which particularly concerned the style of the crowning. The pointed type, in fact, was felt in post-Risorgimento Italy to be less “Italic” than the basilical type. The competition ended in a deadlock. Yet another competition was then announced, to which ten participants from the previous round were invited and twenty-nine new entrants were admitted. The designs that were submitted for the committee’s consideration were still inspired by medieval architecture, but divided into two categories: spired or basilica crowned. Again De Fabris won, and in 1870 he finally got the commission to build the façade. Nevertheless, the controversy around the question of the crowning did not subside, and De Fabris had to work out various solutions taking into account both types. Eventually, and as a result of a city referendum, the basilica mode was accepted.
De Fabris turned to the philosopher Augusto Conti for the sculptural and mosaic decoration of the façade: he devised a grandiose celebration of Mary and the Savior that was, at the same time, also a glorification of Florence’s history. Numerous artists were involved, all of the highest profile, and more than seventy figures were sculpted or mosaicked. The Romanesque and Gothic tradition of decoration with the use of red, white and green marble brought a value of patriotic celebration to the façade recalling the colors of the Italian flag.
Construction was started in 1876 but De Fabris, who died in 1883, would not see its completion. Luigi Del Moro, who took over as site manager, completed the work, and the façade was officially inaugurated on May 12th, 1887: exactly 3 centuries after Arnolfo’s medieval decoration was dismantled.
The names and emblems of the important families who participated in financing the venture were placed in the lower frames so that they were clearly visible. Before becoming mayor of Florence from 1871 to 1878, Ubaldino Peruzzi had been minister of the interior and had answered the call in defense of the interests of the people of Seravezza, employed entirely in the marble industry, and of the quarry owners. He had dealt with the bankruptcy of the company that managed the Altissimo quarries before they passed into the sole ownership of Bernardo Sancholle Henraux, grandson and universal heir of Jean Baptiste Alexandre Henraux, founder in 1821 of the Borrini-Henraux Company for the excavation and trade of the marbles of Monte Altissimo. Bernardo, after having offered in 1865 the material for the monument to Dante raised in Piazza Santa Croce in Florence, carved in Altissimo marble and inaugurated by King Victor Emmanuel II, donated in 1880 the marble destined for the façade of the cathedral and some of Florence’s bridges. In recognition of this generosity and the increasingly close ties between the city of the lily and Seravezza, had his own coat of arms affixed to the façade of S. Maria del Fiore. It consists of a hexagonal shield bearing at the top three chisels, at the bottom the outline of Monte Altissimo and the head of an ox, symbolizing the quarrying, processing and transportation of marble, i.e., the important industrial activity carried out by Henraux in Seravezza beginning in 1821.
It is placed in the left pillar flanking the main door, where Peruzzi’s coat of arms is also located. The Executive Committee resolved that the arms and names of the subscribers to the construction of the façade of the cathedral would be divided into three categories according to how
The coat of arms consists of a hexagonal shield bearing at the top three chisels, at the bottom the outline of Monte Altissimo and the head of an ox, symbolizing the quarrying, processing and transportation of marble, i.e., the important industrial activity carried out by Henraux in Seravezza beginning in 1821.
much they had offered: the benefactors who offered more than 5,000 liras were entitled to the arms and name in the shields placed between the pillars and the doors, and in the mullioned windows of the pillars themselves.
Bernardo died from severe pneumonia in his home in Florence on the evening of April 28, 1881. The funeral services were held two days later with the funeral procession that accompanied the body from the deceased’s home at 9 Via Magenta, via Porta a Prato, to the church of Santa Lucia, which was entirely decorated for mourning. He bequeathed a solid business to his son Roger and daughter Marguerite who was married to Lucien Delatre. He was buried in the family chapel located
within the Porte Sante cemetery, in the section now known as the “Shipyard”, which was erected at the commission of the Henraux family in 1880-1881 on the occasion of Bernard’s death. Marble was used extensively in its construction, but to recall the family’s French origins the now-established Parisian architect Charles Garnier was called in to design the building, in this case he was joined by his student Joseph Cassien-Bernard. Inspired, as in his other achievements, by Greco-Roman architecture, Garnier proposed the building as the form of a small ancient temple, marked on the front by two Ionian columns and a tympanum marked in the center by a cross and crowned by a lighted lantern.
Essential bibliography: Opera Magazine, La facciata neogotica del duomo di Firenze. Breve storia dell’ultima grande impresa artistica per Santa Maria del Fiore , 10/02/2022. A. Tenerini, Frammenti di arte francese in Versilia. I monumenti Henraux nella cappella del Rosario del duomo di Seravezza , Viareggio 2019, p. 10 et seq. Ricordi di Architettura. Raccolta di ricordi d’arte antica e moderna e di misurazione di monumenti , IV, 1881, fasc. XII, pl. II-III, Burial of the Henraux family. Cemetery of S. Miniato al Monte.
The coats of arms of Isabella Magnani Gerini and of Gian Bernando Henraux on the façade of the cathedral of Florence
COLLEZIONE HENRAUX 1960-1970
BY EDITORIAL STAFF
PHOTOS BY NICOLA GNESI
The Collezione Henraux: 1960-1970 exhibition, curated by Edoardo Bonaspetti, took place in summer 2022 to celebrate the company’s 200th anniversary. It was born from the collaboration between the Henraux Foundation and Intesa Sanpaolo’s Gallerie d’Italia Milano and brings together for the first time and after fifty years, in the same spaces in which they were made, a substantial number of sculptures from the Intesa Sanpaolo collection alongside works still belonging to the company.
The exhibition itinerary was divided into two sections: the new Luce di Carrara showroom, recently the subject of a substantial restoration signed by Archea Asssociati, presents documents, archive photos, models and reproductions organized in thematic groups that tell the vital context in which the sculptures were created and also the history of the Collection. The historic Henraux sawmill, whose architectural layout dates back to the early nineteenth century, houses the sculptures in chronological order in dialogue with the winning projects of the Henraux International Sculpture Prize.
The setting, created by Studio 2050+, recalls the marble refinements processes, industrial aesthetics and the extraordinary example of corporate culture which has been demonstrated by the company.
Over the course of more than 200 years of activity, Henraux has been the protagonist of countless projects and collaborations in international visual culture: from the participation in the reconstruction of the abbey of Montecassino (1945-1962), to the construction of the floor of polychrome marbles for the churchyard of St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican (1962).
Beginning with the post-war period, Henraux established a unique relationship with the visual arts thanks to the far-sighted direction of Erminio Cidonio. A meeting with the British sculptor Henry Moore in 1957 helped foster this momentum. In just a few years artists such as Jean (Hans) Arp, Pietro Cascella, Nino Cassani, Rosalda Gilardi Bernocco, Émile Gilioli, Joan Miro, Isamu Noguchi, Maria Papa Rostkowska, Giò Pomodoro, Antoine Poncet, Branko Ružić, Giannetto Salotti, Francois Stahly, Alina Szapocznikow, Georges Vantongerloo and many others went to Querceta di Seravezza to create their works, contributing to a wider cultural relaunch of the company and its territory.
Art production, entrepreneurship and the circulation of ideas were accelerated by a unique business policy, fuelled by skills and vision. Between the end of the 1960s and the beginning of 1970s, the vigour of this exceptional experience began to fade due to changed corporate strategies and, shortly, after being exhibited in 1972 at the Cortile d’Onore of Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara, the collection dispersed.
In 1973 twenty-five works were acquired by the Banca Commerciale Italiana, at the time shareholder of Henraux, and were then merged into what is now Intesa Sanpaolo’s collection of modern and contemporary art.
DESIGN OF THE SENSE S.
THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY ALLÉNO & RIVOIRE IN PARIS
BY MANUELA DELLA DUCATA
PHOTOS BY SEBASTIAN MITTERMEIER
Educating the palate and the eye, seeking the refined balance between the elegant veining of marble and the idea - authentic - of a gourmet chocolate without sugar using the revolutionary birch water. Chef Yannick Alléno, master pastry chef Aurélien Rivoire and designer Laurence Bonnel talk about their chocolate workshop.
Interior of the chocolate factory Alléno & Rivoire, Paris
Situated between the Eiffel Tower and Les Invalides, just a few steps from the Parisian district of Rue Cler, the Alléno & Rivoire boutique reflects all that surrounds it: refinement, discretion and hospitality.
Alléno & Rivoire was born out of a meeting of two masteries, cooking and confectionery, giving birth to a unique collection. It owes this uniqueness to the devising of new ways to enjoy chocolate: the selection is surprising, it multiplies the possibilities of pairings and perfect combinations and it transforms into a palette of colours, confounding our habits and perceptions.
For Yannick Alléno and Aurélien Rivoire, this collection is a reflection of their ideas: an endeavour to create chocolate that is healthier and better for human beings and for the planet. This is also thanks to the birch water that infuses their entire philosophy, in accordance with their firm belief that tomorrow’s palates and consciences are being educated today.
“My goal is to creatively craft a chocolate that is wholesome and good for health. I want to eliminate sugar as much as possible and replace it with a product that can revolutionise our approach: birch water. Its virtues are immense, and today we are fortunate to be able to choose this premium chocolate, which is a chocolate that is good for us, and that cares about the environment. Working alongside Yannick Alléno in this adventure means at the same time drawing the kitchen into our creations and developing our creativity more and more” says Aurélien Rivoire.
The boutique has been designed by Laurence Bonnel.
She worked together with Alléno & Rivoire from the creation of the products until the design of the place. The idea began with the terroirs which inspired some of the chocolates. The
textures, the atmosphere had to make everyone entering the boutique in this theme. Textures and colors had been chosen in function of this idea. Starting from a classical inspiration, like an old pastry boutique, but with a modern view: keeping a warm, greediness feeling in a luxury atmosphere. Laurence Bonnel idea was to create the feeling to people who will enter of the unicity of the chocolates.
The selection of a special marble like Calacatta Viola – supplied and worked by Henraux SpA – had this classical but warm effect, reinforced by the arches that embrace the chocolate.
The choice of marble has been carried out by several visits, initially “emotional” looking to find the material that would best respond to Bonnel/Alleno/Rivoire’s dream, and then gradually more and more “technical”.
Manuela Della Ducata: What about the selected material impressed you?
Laurence Bonnel: I chose between different blocks, the color was really important: I needed a very warm shade, with a nice contrast between the general stone and the veins, and with a soft “geometry” if I can say. Strong veins, but not too strong. It was all about the balance. This block had all I had in mind.
M.D.D.: Why did you select a marble, an Italian marble!, and not other materials like wood, glass?
L.B.: Since the beginning of the project I always thought about this Calacatta Viola marble because it has the luxury, warm atmosphere I wanted for the boutique. In fact it reminds also the chocolate shades, which was interesting. Sometimes marble can give a cold feeling, but this Calacatta Viola keep us in a soft feeling which corresponds to a luxurious but reassuring and greedy place. I preferred this marble to wood because the veins, and the stone
Interior of the chocolate shop
Alléno & Rivoire, Paris
Interior of the chocolate shop Alléno & Rivoire, Paris
“I think our store is a bit magical: it is a parenthesis that offers the possibility, for a moment, to disconnect from reality, from the Parisian tumult and daily stress, to indulge oneself with greed.”
in general, give a very special energy. I also had in mind something like an ancient inspiration with the arches, and this marble blends perfectly with the arches.
M.D.D.: Why a chocolate shop and why with Mr. Rivoire?
Yannick Alléno: I like challenges, that’s what animates me. I knew almost nothing about chocolate, and I think that became a strength for us. Because we had to learn everything, we were able to offer something different: to create chocolates without sugar but just as delicious, healthier for us and for the environment.
The Alléno & Rivoire chocolate factory is also the continuity of my Modern Cuisine: a Modern Confectionery with sugar-free fruit preserves, worked with birch water which concentrates the taste and sublimates the texture of each fruit. Continuity also through the work of the sauces that we find in different creations such as clover or vanilla pods.
With Aurélien, we worked on modern sauces in chocolates. He and I have in common our training as pastry chefs, ice cream makers, chocolate makers and confectioners. We have been working together for a long time, he was my Pastry Chef at the Pavillon Ledoyen. We share the same philosophy.
M.D.D.: In addition to the choice of material excavated in Italy, are there any other projects that will perhaps involve Italy in the future in your life?
Y.A.: Italy is in my blood, in my heart. As there was the wine in marble (the Fuori Marmo vintage), there will be other projects with this country which is dear to me.
M.D.D.: What do you feel when you enter the boutique and what do you think your customers feel and perceive?
Aurélien Rivoire: Every morning I feel a deep sense of pride and accomplishment when I enter the store. It is the result of 10 years of work with Chef Yannick Alléno!
It’s a very special boutique because it combines the codes of luxury (marble design, high quality chocolate products...) and at the same time is very accessible. It exudes a lot of warmth and friendliness, especially thanks to the very attentive and benevolent welcome of the staff. Because I wanted the customers to feel this desire that I have to share with them and to transmit my passion. I think our store is a bit magical: it is a parenthesis that offers the possibility, for a moment, to disconnect from reality, from the Parisian tumult and daily stress, to indulge oneself with greed.
M.D.D.: In your opinion is all the attention you pay to health and respect for the environment perceived and appreciated by customers?
A.R.: The work around birch water has aroused the curiosity of our customers. For several years, they are more and more vigilant about what they consume, and I think we have evolved together, because our work on the sugar-free started almost four years ago. It was a huge challenge to work on a sugar-free and gourmet chocolate, but we took up the challenge. The most beautiful reward is to see the customers surprised by the absence of sugar, because in the mouth it is not felt. They often tell me that they are happy to be able to enjoy themselves without feeling guilty!
The exterior of the chocolate shop Alléno & Rivoire, Paris
Sauro Lorenzoni.
Marble, a lifelong companion
BY ROBERTO BERNABÒ
PHOTOS BY NICOLA GNESI
Sauro Lorenzoni recounts to Roberto Bernabò the story that binds him inextricably to marble and the Henraux company. Through his experience, first as a craftsman and then as an artist, he takes us to the heart of an everyday life made up of extraordinary men and encounters marked by work and art.
Right, Sauro Lorenzoni
Sauro Lorenzoni, Senza titolo , 2015 cm 45x30x35
Sauro Lorenzoni next to Femme Paysage by Jean (Hans) Arp during the exhibition Collezione Henraux 1960-1970 , Querceta
A unique story within Henraux, among all those told about the world of artisans who have contributed to the history of this company.
Because Sauro Lorenzoni is one of the few artisans who has consistently crossed the line between craftsman and artist.
We meet with marble craftsman Sauro Lorenzoni. His story is unique within Henraux, among all those told about the world of artisans who have contributed to the history of this company. It is unique because Sauro Lorenzoni is one of the few artisans who has consistently crossed the line between craftsman and artist, having done both in his long career.
Roberto Bernabò: How was a craftsman made in Versilia at the time you began? The Apuane Mountains confining not only the boundary of the physical horizon but also the human one, with the deep history of work that testify all of the artisanal workshops active in the centre of Pietrasanta and beyond. It seems it was almost a compulsory destiny to do this craft. Is that true?
Sauro Lorenzoni: Yes, in fact, I was 16 years old when I started in a studio in Pietrasanta, on the Aurelia, in Madonnina,
there were four or five of us guys because at that time everybody was working with marble. Then, maybe, out of ten, three or four would stay on, because it was easy to get tired and leave, to go and do something else. Who knows why, on the other hand, I managed to resist. After Pietrasanta, I went back to Querceta, on Via Biagioni, to the studio of two brothers from Forte dei Marmi, the Menchetti brothers. When I came in there were three of us, later other young men came in, and I stayed until I left for military service. After the draft, I went to France for about a year, first to Strasbourg and then to Dijon. I worked for a gentleman who had an atelier in Paris and took jobs out of town. It was an important experience before returning to Versilia to work in different workshops in Pietrasanta and Querceta and then coming to Henraux. It was 1968 and from there the whole story, which lasted twenty-five years, began.
R.B.: This then, is the story of Henraux, the marble giant opening up to contemporary art, with great artists coming to the company to work. As they do again today.
S.L.: Yes, practically everybody worked here. Every moment there was a new someone from the greats of that time arriving. There were Marino Marini and Henry Moore, then artists from America, the Netherlands, Germany and France. They were all here.
R.B.: And you were a modeller at that time?
S.L.: Yes, we started as modellers mainly working on figurative artworks, but slowly, and especially with the arrival of Henry Moore, the way of working changed. We began to measure ourselves by more abstract and less figurative
forms. And under the influence of these contemporary artists, we all began to do our own artistic research no longer based on the figurative art.
R.B.: And how were relationships with the artists?
S.L.: It depends from artist to artist. Moore, for example, didn’t speak Italian and seemed to be a bit shy: he spent most of his time here with the photographer. They would lock themselves in a room, that they called “Moore’s room” back then, and take picture after picture, for hours at a time. They’d take a thousand shots, then he’d come over, stay twenty minutes, an hour or two, and then go back. When he would bring us the models, he would come with a shoebox full of very small sketches. At this point, he would tell us the measurements of the marble
Sauro Lorenzoni and Paolo Carli
The Masters of Henraux
“When the critic Giuseppe Marchiori came, all the artists came. It was a real moment of confrontation, of discussion. Apart from the biggest artists, like Marini or Moore, for the others to be able to talk and be there at the time when Marchiori was there was the best experience.”
sculptures to be reproduced to scale and we would execute, and it was fun. It was not an easy thing to translate a figure from a small scale to a large one, but it was not difficult for us, we were experts in the craft. Moore, in any case, was so good that he always got the proportions right. His greatness, his strength, even to hear what the other sculptors were saying, was just that: to know exactly the proportions.
R.B.: Often, when ordinary people find out that behind the works of great contemporary artists, there is a lot of
right eyes... because he also sees behind the work.”
R.B.: Moore was definitely a great reference point. Besides him, who have been the other masters with whom it has been great to work?
S.L.: My experience with Marino Marini was interesting. He also came for no more than a couple of hours, but it was really good to work with him. Then there was Émile Giglioli, who was very communicative, really very good. But in the end, they were all here. When the
work by artisans who physically make the final work, they wonder where the artist’s skill lies since someone else made it. As someone who has done this, what do you think? Where do we find the artist’s skill?
S.L.: The skill of the artist is precisely this, in the idea and the ability to see big. Once, Gino Cosentino, a Sicilian sculptor who worked for a time at Henraux and who was crazy about Moore, said when he saw him: “Now I understand why he does these things well: because he has the
critic Giuseppe Marchiori came, all the artists came. It was a real moment of confrontation, of discussion. Apart from the biggest artists, like Marini or Moore, for the others to be able to talk and be there at the time when Marchiori was there was the best experience. Everyone was waiting for him to write something about them. Some artists courted him tremendously. Of anecdotes in general I could tell many, of particular episodes there were also many. Just
“The tools that I used twenty, thirty years ago, I still use. I have never changed. The technology has not entered me. In the end, you can feel it with your hands.”
imagine, Moore had a small sculpture made in Carrara, and when it was not yet finished he had it brought here and destroyed. I never understood why, because it looked right to me, and yet he had it smashed to pieces.
R.B.: Returning to Marino Marini. What memories do you have?
S.L.: Once with Marino Marini, we had to make two large sculptures, so we started the work. When he arrived and the work was already sketched out, he said, “No, don’t work anymore, that’s enough.” A few days later he arrived with a can of paint and a big brush and started making marks on these rough sculptures that are now in Florence. In the end, he left them like that. The work was not even half done, but he did not say “I’ll pay you less” or “I won’t pay.” No way, what was established was now established. The only thing he did was two big M’s with wax in the base, and he told me he wanted them engraved, so I engraved them for him.
R.B.: Of all these artists, who was the best at working with marble?
S.L.: Maybe Gilioli. Gilioli worked hard, and got dirty, while others didn’t. They came with charcoal, with wax and they marked everything, even Vivarelli often came with wax, but never that he tried to work. They would mark where the stone needed to be removed and that was it. Here they made a big Christ for a Roman sculptor, Lorenzo Ferri, a very good figurative artist. He sent a big model, it must have been 4 meters, but it didn’t fit together. He had his students make it, it was simply badly made. He would sit in front of that Christ because he was already very old, he would mark the points and another craftsman and I would work: that Christ became a masterpiece.
R.B.: Then, amid so many Italian artists, there came a whole generation of talent from the East, Korean and Japanese artists. A constant fusion of cultures.
S.L.: Sure. Some even lived at the quarries. Not only Asian, for example, seven or eight Germans, with a professor, slept, ate and worked up there. It was a golden time.
R.B.: It was in that working climate and cultural context that you also began to be an artist. What was the trigger?
S.L.: Yes, I found a roughed-out sculpture, left half-finished by a young aspiring artist who was working here but had left. Because some came, left and then returned, but also some, who after their first experience, never did. So I took it, thinking, “Well, it’s already started...” I worked on it and immediately sold it to a lady from Lucca. From there I got the urge and continued. It was a golden period. The CEO at Henraux at that time was the lawyer Lavaggi. I was already working at eight o’clock in the morning and sometimes I heard footsteps coming. It was Mr Lavaggi making the rounds. Sometimes, however, it was already night, and he would look at me, exchange a few words and then leave, I would finish my work and stay there and devote myself to my sculptures. I did not buy the marble: it was all salvaged stuff, leftovers from the big sculptures that were made and thrown away. If I liked them I would put them aside and do something with them.
R.B.: Which tools did you use?
S.L.: As for me, the tools I used twenty or thirty years ago, I still use. I have never changed. Technology has not taken over me. For example, these young Koreans all have these little machines, very fast and very practical but when I work with these tools later on I have to go back to working with them by hand. Eventually, you can feel the difference.
R.B.: How are Sauro Lorenzoni’s days now?
S.L.: I get up very early in the morning, at 6:30 a.m. I leave home and go to the studio in Pescarella (an area of Pietrasanta still full of marble workshops - ed.), alone, open up and work until 11 a.m. That is the time I devote every day to sculpture.
R.B.: What guides your selection for your works? Some are in white marble, some in black, and some in other materials... S.L.: It depends on the availability. I used to like black very much, now less so. White... the nicer white, though. With the last little piece from the cut of a block of the Cervaiole that Paolo Carli had
given me, I made a sculpture for myself. When a beautiful piece comes out of the Cervaiole quarry, it is really beautiful, and you work well.
R.B.: What does it mean in your experience “to work well”?
S.L.: Not in the sense that it is “soft,” the ease of workmanship is not in softness or hardness. In the sense that the chisel blade cuts it well. Here, it reacts very well and leaves the colour as it is. There is some marble that when worked does not yield, as the ancients used to say. Whereas this does, this is good marble. Even after polishing, which changes it a lot, it takes that fleshy colour, which is
not blinding white. It takes on the colour of skin.
R.B.: One last thing: in all the photos, is this beautiful hat that you marble craftsmen have always, always used! So it was the first thing one had to learn as soon as one entered the workshop on the first day.
S.L.: Yes, we had to learn how to make our own hats! There’s the Tirreno, for example, it’s exactly the right size, eh! The Nazione doesn’t fit, it’s the same if I take another newspaper. With the Tirreno, on the other hand, I can do it with my eyes closed.
Sauro Lorenzoni, Paolo Carli and Manuela Della Ducata at Henraux
50 HUDSON YARDS, NEW YORK
BY EDITORIAL STAFF
50 Hudson Yards is a 78-story office building in New York designed by Foster + Partners.
Covering an entire block, the tower is a distinctive piece of the city that mindfully sits within New York’s urbangrid. The building acts as a gateway to New York’s vibrant new neighbourhood – Hudson yards – offering a direct underground connection to the adjacent subway station. The LEED Gold-designed tower forms an integral part of the Hudson Yards district.
The cladding of the entrance lobby has been done using flueted and double wave “S” walls, in Versilys Gold (Monte Altissimo, Seravezza).
Hudson Yards gives back to the city new shops, restaurants, bike parking, and transport connections at street level for around 280.000 sqmt.
Its lively public entrance lobbies are animated by two large-scale artworks by Frank Stella, which celebrate the creative heritage of the city and draw people into the building.
The tower offers panoramic views of Manhattan, with the Hudson River to the west and the Empire State Building to the east. A communal amenity on the 32nd floor features a variety of meeting and event spaces. The top of the tower features a domed stainless-steel lighting installation, designed in collaboration with Jamie Carpenter, which catches the light during the day and illuminates the building at night.
MAN TIME SCULPTURE Remembering the sculptor Luigi Mormorelli
BY COSTANTINO PAOLICCHI
Luigi Mormorelli’s life, as told through the eyes of a friend. An intimate and admiration-filled memoir that brings us closer to this cultured and weighty figure. The dazzling discovery of sculpture and marble, the sculptor’s personal and professional renewal, and his boundless love for Versilia and the men who helped him transform his visions into sculpture.
The group Quattro figure bianche 1972 by sculptor Luigi Mormorelli on display in the garden of the Hotel Royal in Viareggio in 1973
Mormorelli felt the urgency of following his dream of beauty, he wanted to reveal the ability to express his inner world with a test “of blood and hand”, as he had to define its collection of poems published in 1990.
Among all those who have played an important role in my personal and professional journey, those who have contributed in various ways to my cultural development, Luigi Mormorelli is the person I remember most with gratitude, affection and nostalgia. I am nostalgic for the evenings when we met in his modest house among the olive trees in Strettoia, to resume each time our path of reflections and confronting ideas, which followed over time a kind of Ariadne’s thread and allowed us to advance together - little by little - into the vast mystery of existence. He was older than me by several years and all the wiser for the trials he had endured in the course of a life that was not always easy but in many ways extraordinary. We would talk for hours on end, late into the night indulging in a little wine as platonic companions, in the company of a fire bordered by plenty of ash in the fireplace. Luigi Mormorelli had a vast and solid cultural philosophy, with a humanistic bent thanks to his studies and vocation. He read everything, philosophy and history, literature and poetry. He spoke excellent French, loved Latin and knew Greek. He studied music at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena. He was an engineer. A large party of his youthful years were spent building machines for the food industry that he designed, patented and installed everywhere in Italy and Europe. In Parma he had a company with over two hundred workers; he was president of the Industrial Association. He spoke of that period as an important experience, but one that belonged to the distant past, more in a mental than chronological sense.
At the end of the 1950s, he decided to make a radical change in his life. After selling his company, he went to live at Colle di Buggiano in his childhood home, devoting himself to studying and pursuing research in the field of figurative arts. That decision had certainly matured after a long painful reflection: Mormorelli felt the urgency to follow his dream of beauty, he wanted to reveal - to himself first and foremost - the ability to express his inner world with a test “of blood and hand,” as he defined in one of his poetry collections published in 1990.
He turned to painting at first; in 1961 he opened a studio on the Lungarni in Florence. After the 1966 flood, he moved to Paris. In Florence he met Soffici, Luzi, and Bigongiari; in Bologna, he met and frequented Giorgio Morandi. In Paris he would meet Moravia, Piero Giani and Dino Buzzati.
After exhibiting his paintings in prestigious galleries, by the late 1960s Mormorelli realized that he could find formal languages more congenial to him through sculpture. Sculpture is three-dimensional, requiring a more complex, more articulate dexterity and a commitment involving different subjects and professionalism. As early as 1966 Mormorelli had begun his plastics research, and a few years later in 1969, his sculptures (of terracotta, bronze, tuff, and plaster) were already showing distinctive and autonomous characters, a sign of intense work and rapid maturation.
Sculptor Luigi Mormorelli in the garden of the Hotel Royal
It was in that same year of 1969 that Mormorelli made a long trip to Latin America to further his study of the pre-Columbian civilizations that so fascinated him. Inevitably marble attracted him, and so, beginning in the late 1960s, Versilia, Pietrasanta and Seravezza became the places designated to provide stimulation and collaboration, as well as the necessary material for his work. He went to live in Strettoia with Emanuela Bini, “Lady of the Labyrinth,” whom he married in September 1970, by whom he would have a daughter, Margherita, and the serenity indispensable to sustain a great new adventure.
Versilia, marble and marble craftsmen were the references for a process of spiritual and creative renewal that Mormorelli experimented with in those years. He attended the sculpture studios of Henraux in Querceta, where he met Giuseppe Marchiori, Gillo Dorfles, Pietro Cascella, Henry Moore, Jean Arp and other sculptors who – on the impetus of the initiative of the company’s head, Erminio Cidonio – had initiated a project aimed at establishing at Henraux itself an international centre and museum of contemporary sculpture. Among the most important activities were the publication of the magazine Marmo, edited by Bruno Alfieri, and the major 1972 exhibition at the Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara, where Henraux exhibited the works already acquired in its collection. Works made at the Querceta studios by the masters (including Mormorelli himself) who joined the operation that Cidonio had destined to set a new course for artistic marble working in Versilia in the following years.
After that experience, Mormorelli held important solo exhibitions: in 1973 again at the Palazzo dei Diamanti, the following year at the Salon de Mai in Paris, then at the Galleria Ada Zunino in Milan, in Montecatini, at the Rotonda di via Besana in Milan, at Monte Verità in Ascona, at the Centro Culturale Olivetti in Ivrea, in Lugano, in Campione d’Italia, at the Palazzo Mediceo in Seravezza, and in San Miniato. A professional curriculum of absolute respect, documented by the numerous catalogues and monographs bearing the signatures of well-known critics and art historians such as Argan, Apollonio, Marsan, Munari, Segato, Solmi etc.
Introducing the extensive critical catalogue of the 1982 Campione exhibition, Giorgio Segato noted how Mormorelli had arrived “… by a long-considered and contemplated decision to grand scale, to the black granite of Africa, to bardiglio marble, to works characterized by very strong instances of urban insertion.” Having overcome the urgency of modelling, the immediate expression of manual dexterity, he had opened himself “… to space, to the truest sculpture, the one that blends decorative elements into architecture, harmonizes matter and space and defines the environment with a sign or aesthetic appeal.”
All of his marble, stone and bronze sculptures were initially made in the Henraux studios
The group of Quattro figure bianche , 1972, Bard marble from the Balzello quarry in Arni, 550x200x200 cm
in Querceta and then in Pietrasanta, particularly in Sem Ghelardini’s workshop and at the Da Prato foundry. Like Moore, like Arp, like Noguchi, Mormorelli discovered the great tradition of craft and culture that had been the heritage - for more than a century - of Versilia’s artisans, whom the editor of Marmo magazine, Alfieri, did not hesitate to call “masters”.
It is precisely the special relationship that was established between Mormorelli and the artisans of sculpture, between Mormorelli and the repositories of marble culture, that I would like to recall in this remembrance of my late friend. Our friendship was born almost by chance in the late 1970s. Luigi was preparing a seminar that he would give in 1979 at the Olivetti Cultural Center in Ivrea, structured into three lectures on Il lavoro dello scultore (The sculptor’s work). On that occasion, he wanted to show some of the traditional working tools of quarrymen and sculptors. He was looking for a “stampetta”, also called a “foil”, a special steel bar that was used in quarries to prepare holes for mines. Someone mentioned my name to him because I had already collected various items destined for the Museo Etnografico, now housed in the Medici Palace in Seravezza.
It was then that I met him, and when I had a chance to read the text he edited for that seminar, I was struck by the description of Versilia as he had seen it, felt it and intuited it even in only a few years of frequenting it, revealing a sensitivity that I had never before encountered except in some of the Versilian writers dearest to me, such as Enrico Pea and Sirio Giannini. Luigi Mormorelli showed that he understood the most intimate, deepest, and most representative truths of the great culture of Versilia, of its distant and recent history which has always drawn the fundamental reasons for its existence and becoming, from marble.
Luigi spoke of Versilia as a place of eminent dignity, formed by three “nations” and three distinct civilizations with peculiar cultures: one of the sea and the other of the mountains, to which a third “nation,” that of marble, had been added during the nineteenth century: “Marble,” he wrote, “has unified the first two and has become their body, hypòstasis and substance. Marble is the spirit that acts as the medium and path between earth and water.”
Mormorelli’s respect came from this feeling, attachment, and friendship for the men of marble, for the craftsmen who helped him realise his visions in marble and stone, who advised and supported him, like Sem with whom he loved to confide whenever he had to undertake a new artwork.
Luigi Mormorelli showed a surly and gruff character in appearance that was nevertheless overshadowed by sensitivity, generosity and compassion for the sorrows of the world. At the same time, he was always open to confrontation and dialogue, and so he sought and found his friends and collaborators in the simple, practical people of the Pietrasanta sculpture studios, who were the real architects of the Versilia town’s international fame.
He resented being referred to as an “artist” or a “master”: “I am a sculptor”, he said, “and mine is just a job.” I think this helps to better understand his dedication to the sculpting trade he had chosen, aware that he was giving up an easy life, the comforts of the entrepreneur as he once was. Furthermore, the freedom of thought, which kept him away from compromise and excluded him from the benefits to be gained, was his pride and consolation in the difficult trials of his final years.
Quattro figure bianche, 1972, detail
Above, Warrior , figure in Versilia tuff, 1972
Below, La Veneziana , 1973, granite stele black impala, Palazzo dei Diamanti, Ferrara
Right, the stele being worked on in Sem Ghelardini’s studio in Pietrasanta, 1972
In 1990, a collection of poems he had written in the years 1979 to 1989 was published in the Mediterranea series by the publisher Mauro Baroni. He had entitled it Strettoie, not only because it was composed in Strettoia in his house among the olive trees, but especially because those poems were an expression of a suffered condition imposed by the years and exacerbated by his progressive isolation. Yet they were filled with humanity, imbued with a willingness to participate in the common fate of pain that bears down on men, open to the hope that drew from his Christian faith: “Credo nel sicuro amore di Cristo/ [I believe in the definite love of Christ]” – he stated in one of his last poems – “chirurgo stereobate sonante, mente senza interprete,/ altura, pietra murata, crocchia stretta… [sonorous stereobate surgeon, mind without interpreter, high ground, walled stone, tight bun...].”
Strettoie, “… là dove l’anima costretta, ogni tanto s’allarga in poesia non scritta [... there where the constrained soul, now and then, widens into unwritten poetry]”, was meant to represent the spiritual testament of a man and an artist (although he did not want to be called that!) whose experience spanned much of the twentieth century and who should be placed among the major exponents of international sculpture at the end of the millennium.
Dineo Seshee Bopape, Born in the first light of the morning [moswara’marapo] , view of the exhibition, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2022
Courtesy of the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milano.
Photo: Agostino Osio
HOLDING DUST, IN TUNE WITH NATURE
Dineo Seshee Bopape talking with Lucia Aspesi and Fiammetta Griccioli
BY FIAMMETTA GRICCIOLI
In 2022, the Henraux Foundation and the company collaborated with the South African artist Dineo Seshee Bopape for the exhibitions at TBA21 in Venice and Pirelli HangarBicocca in Milan.
This conversation condenses a series of encounters and dialogues that took place during the making of the exhibition Born in the first light of the Morning [moswara’marapo] at Pirelli HangarBicocca from October 6th 2022 to January 29th, 2023 by Lucia Aspesi e Fiammetta Griccioli and the days just after its opening.
This text is extracted from the conversation included in the catalogue: Dineo Seshee Bopape Born in the first light of the morning [moswara’marapo], published by Pirelli HangarBicocca and Marsilio Editori, 2022.
Federica Griccioli: In your work, we encounter materials such as charcoal, ash and clay that you employ to evoke ephemeral and ritual moments. This makes us think of other forms of dust
present in the show, and in particular of the marble dust that carries the voice of the mountain. Mothabeng, is an intimate and meditative place of contemplation. Inside an earthly dome, an audio recording that was created in a marble quarry in the Apuan Alps is played. The track combines sounds from different sources: environmental and ground vibrations. In this work, one can experience a journey into the depths of the earth. What were your feelings when you saw the quarry for the first time?
Dineo Seshee Bopape: As I arrived at the mountain there was an intensity of feeling when looking at what looked like the scars... While there, there was a question of what was the mountain’s experience of all actions upon it and within it and later also its relationship to other mountains in the world as well. What is in the dust?
Courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan
Photo: Agostino Osio
Right,
Dineo Seshee Bopape
Courtesy Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan
Photo: Lorenzo Palmieri
Dineo Seshee Bopape, Mothabeng , 2022
View of the exhibition, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2022
Courtesy of the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca
Photo: Agostino Osio
Above and blelow left, Dineo Seshee Bopape, Lerole: footnotes (The struggle of memory against forgetting) , 2017 Installation view at Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2022
Courtesy the artist, Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Beirut/ Hamburg and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan
Courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan
Photo: Agostino Osio
“ Mothabeng in fact means ‘of the mountain,’ and I was thinking about the African continental philosophy/cosmology… of the mountains … and how they hold memories, the bones of the earth, the primal sediment communicating through the mountain, with dust and soil/rock, this journey changed again my thoughts about marble/ stone objects.”
Lucia Aspesi: The visit was so intense. With the bodily senses you could experience the volumes, the voids and surfaces of the rocks. You could feel the humidity of the quarry and the blinding reflection of the light on the marble. Being there, it became evident that it was the acoustic dimension that you would then enquire and that would take us back to the site one year after.
D.S.B.: Yeah, we had found some old tunnels that were a joy to play with. It took a journey to do some recordings of the mountain… we recorded writing on the mountain, writing various shapes, shapes that occur in various cultures globally from the beginnings of our scribbling time. Mothabeng in fact means ‘of the mountain,’ and I was thinking about the African continental philosophy/ cosmology… of the mountains … and how they hold memories, the bones of the earth, the primal sediment communicating through the mountain, with dust and soil/ rock, this journey changed again my thoughts about marble/stone objects.
F.G.: In your work you rely on different chronologies: the geological time of minerals, the constellations and phases of the moon, and social histories which inform also the title of the exhibition.
D.S.B.: Born in the first light of the morning [moswara’marapo]: just before the sun rises, the separation (duration, really) between night time and the (next) morning, so that ‘inbetween space,’ the
transitory space almost like a waiting room (through time), but also so brief so short, where the magic happens. Moswara’marapo is a Sepedi word, phrase, meaning ‘master of ceremonies,’ but it is also literally “the holder of bones.”
Bones being the mineral that holds the memory of the body, of the self, also then referring to other bones that are in the show.
L.A.: Also the exhibition unfolds as a transitory space, with the natural light shaping the volumes from the morning till dusk.
D.S.B.: Yes, this occurs also in the relation between light and objects as well: how soon does an object end, the relation to how perhaps the light then describes the entry point of where the object is, and the object also being an event in time as well, how long does the memory of something last (continue), the transient period between when the thing is (was) and the after-effects as the after-effect sits in.
So that process could be in a similar way, in a similar family (in the same WhatsApp group) to the dusk period or the dawn period.
And also regarding how the transition between the different works and their relationships happens: when and how does the sound from other works enter into/ within the next work, the meeting point, the bleeding of the sound or the bleeding of the smells.
DESIGNS IN BIANCO ALTISSIMO
MARBLE *
BY LUCIEN KAYSER PHOTOS BY STUDIO VESOTSKY
More than 400 metres of lines in Bianco Altissimo marble with different textures, born from the creativity of Bruno Baltzer and Leonora Bisagno - in art Baltzer & Bisagno - gladden the eye and the soul between the sports field and the headquarters of the Lycée de l’Athénée de Luxembourg. A valuable inlay work and a seemingly minimalist statement from which emerges the cultural relevance of the playful gesture.
*Article published in “Land” magazine, July 8, 2022
One might speak of the paradox of sport, since it blurs with the increasingly complex paths of competition, transcending mere recreation. Yet, in his Homo Ludens, published in 1938, the Dutchman Huizinga saw things differently, asserting that culture is born in play and as play. It must also be said that, in both play and sport, rules are needed, and that most of the time one starts from a well-defined area, for example, a soccer field or an athletic track. In the second case, the athlete, during a sprint or relay, must be careful not to cross the line marking his lane, as he would be immediately disqualified.
These restrictions, this corset that prevents unbridled conduct, ensures fairness, impartiality and, through fair play, the strict acceptance of rules. Art, on the other hand, doesn't care, since what it loves most precisely is unruliness. Consequently, it goes wild, swaps goals in soccer, elevates balls in basketball and plays in costumes created by Italian designers. It deflects and it overflows in every sense.
Here we find ourselves in a sports field next to a school building, in this case, the Athénée de Luxembourg, boulevard PierreDupong. In the middle, as a way through, an empty space with a few trees and access to the different areas, indispensable to the fire brigade in case of need. Yes, you guessed it: for an artistic endeavour here all that is left is the ground. The duo Baltzer & Bisagno understood this perfectly, and this space, today, gladdens the eye and delights the soul.
There are seven lines that down around the field demarcate the runners' lanes. And as if they had leapt into the air, as if they had escaped from their too-rigid design within an oval, there they are suddenly up, ready for all sorts of escapades and facetiousness. Sometimes they advance straight ahead, determined to get as quickly as possible to some point we are struggling to locate; at other times they become sinuous if not circular, serpentine, hesitant to proceed or
even dabbling along the way. It is up to us to follow them, we are the ones who choose whether to stop when they stop or to continue by prolonging them through a little imagination. Don't be so sure to see them return to their confinement anytime soon, once they have tasted all this freedom.
These lines, caught in artist-infused madness, are of various lengths: some less than ten meters and some more than a hundred meters long. In all, they make 415.50 meters, divided into 446 units of nearly one meter. Snow-white decorations on the grey floor made of Bianco Altissimo marble, often with different textures, produced by precious inlay work well known in the art of cabinet-making. Bruno Baltzer and Leonora Bisagno are regular customers of the Apuan Alps quarries. We remember the huge block they had cut to compete with Mussolini who, in 1928, had the largest monolith quarried for a Roman monument that extolled his glory. But Baltzer & Bisagno are modest; they belong to minimalist art (in the sense of minimal operations that always have a certain effect). Their monolith, which they had cut into pieces (five segments in all), eventually became a two-seater bench: la Panchina di Luis Simon (you may have recognized the anagram) is always waiting for someone to take a seat.
We find again with Baltzer & Bisagno, taking up the initial discourse, the playful side of the gesture in Arabesque today, but like play, art is also serious: in this way things are restored, just as with over-emphasized symbols, to a human scale, giving them a social dimension or meaning. As chance would have it then (or perhaps it is no coincidence), the seven lines – which are also departures – refer to the number of years normally spent in the high school in question. On the starting line, then, and may it be a fruitful and positive path.
VOICES OF THE ARTISTS: BALTZER & BISAGNO
The Arabesque work stems from a desire to design the places in which we live in visual continuity and meaning through the harmonious integration of spaces and their intersections.
The Lycée de l'Athénée Luxembourg, an institution dedicated to the scholastic education of young people – whose apprenticeships combine a sense of rigour and accomplishment – proposes evolutionary forms, particularly in the main passageways and access points to the different areas of the premises. Arabesque takes the perfectly calibrated lines of the adjacent athletic track as its reference, which, due to an unexpected irregularity, exceeds the limits of the classical form adopted since Ancient
Greece and breaks free on the passage to the south wing of the high school. The rectilinear tracks, in a surprising leap of imagination, thus break free from their own boundaries to become sinuous and creative paths that propose unusual routes. Through permanent but never boring inscriptions, through various perspectives, curved or straight lines, and geometric or serpentine paths, it is possible to follow one trajectory or abandon it to take another, as happens in the wonderful movement of the mind when we follow the threads of thought. With no edges, no limits, no direction of travel, and no finish line, everyone can follow his or her own path, going along with his or her own rhythm, letting himself or herself be carried away by the notes of a melody
The area of the Lycée de l’Athénée de Luxembourg before (top) and after (bottom and right) the project by Baltzer & Bisagno.
The work allows multiple and modulated perceptions depending on the different vantage points: a close-up view, an aerial perspective, a raised floor, and finally a side view.
or the figures of an arabesque. Thus the seven lines, like the seven years of higher education, render a picture of the personal and collegial paths that even Datzemisch may undertake.
Thus Arabesque expresses, with a playful gesture directed elsewhere, the magic of the mark, the principal act of representing oneself and the world. Mixing almost mathematical lines, spontaneous forms like freed scribbles on a blank page, reminiscent of surrealist poetics or imaginary geoglyphs, the pattern reveals
respecting the basic function of this place, which is that of a passage connecting the different areas of the high school, gives access to the contiguous sites. The work allows multiple and modulated perceptions depending on the different vantage points: a close-up view if walking on the site itself or sitting on one of the desks, an aerial perspective from the different floors of the building, a raised floor from the terrace of the north wing, and finally a side view from the balcony located at the far end of the Athenaeum's wide parvis area.
line as a language common to science and arts.
Arabesque appears as a kind of inlay on the ground, thanks to the white marble insert as a chromatic extension of the track lines, which illuminates the monochromatic surface punctuated by circular tree-lined areas. The installation,
Arabesque is based on calcium carbonate stone, the precious Bianco Altissimo marble, the classical and monumental use of which is transfigured here to create a light and complex installation that, by interacting with the surrounding space and being integrated into it, creates a wellexecuted urban setting.
HENRAUX SCULPTS THE GRANDE MAX BY SANDRO GORRA IN BIANCO ALTISSIMO CERVAIOLE MARBLE
BY ROSI FONTANA
Henraux has been involved in the making of the exhibition of Sandro Gorra’s works, L’arte dell’attimo, by using his Bianco Altissimo marble to sculpt the Grande Max, the monumental sculpture that has been on display in the main square of Pietrasanta from 6th March to 5th June 2022. Such work is the outcome of a close partnership between Henraux and Sandro Gorra who tried his hand at marble for the first time in the region that is traditionally associated with sculpture. The result is an adult giraffe and a baby giraffe crouching down as it receives a deeply symbolical gesture: taking over the spots that the Grande Max gently places on the baby giraffe as they come off its distinctive coat.
A protective gesture, a first conferment of life, the deep and generous meaning of donating knowledge and experience, symbolically translated here into the parts that the adult hands over to the baby giraffe crouching in front of it. The purity of the message conveyed
by the Grande Max is intrinsic: it is the essence that divides the earth between great men and men, between those who do donate and those who don’t.
The making of this impressive sculpture for the exhibition in Pietrasanta is also the connecting link between the artist and the area, which is embodied in the use of marble from the Cervaiole quarries and in the partnership with Henraux which has always worked with and hosted the greatest artists, both contemporary and older, encouraging them to try their hands at the extremely valuable stone materials from its quarries in the historic sculpture studios within its Querceta premises, near Lucca.
Bianco Altissimo marble, a statuary marble of outstanding beauty, plasticity and value, is the material chosen to produce the Grande Max, weighing four tons by three metres wide and over two metres high. Commissioned by Attilio Bindi, a collector, the work was entrusted to
Henraux by the famous businessman who lent it to the Municipality of Pietrasanta for the exhibition of Gorra’s works. Attilio Bindi has built an active partnership with Henraux and its president Paolo Carli on a number of projects in which the Milan born businessman plays a key role in Versilia. Sandro Gorra was extremely impressed by Henraux’s studio, which the artist saw as a sort of imaginary city made up of big solids, the blocks of marble. No less excited was the artist as he saw his sculpture being worked at, as he stated himself: “Seeing the birth of my first marble sculpture through Henraux, his technicians and his craftsmen was great. The world of sculpture is at the feet of the Grande Max which was born with a very strong, mighty, symbolic identity. A sculpture that deeply moved me and enabled me to discover the world of marble and see the birth of the big white giraffe.” While the sculpture was being produced, a strong connection bonded
the artist and the company, and in particular a relationship of great esteem formed between Sandro Gorra and the President of Henraux, Paolo Carli who regards this new collaboration as the revival of the legacy left by Erminio Cidonio, whose wide vision of the company’s responsibility in support of artists still under pins Henraux’s role in sculpture and in the relations with the greatest artists.
Along its trail, the exhibition of Sandro Gorra’s works curated by Gianluca Marziani that hosted the Grande Max and includes 42 works of art, supported
by the Municipality of Pietrasanta, in partnership with Laura Tartarelli Contemporary Art gallery, under the aegis of the Tuscan region and the Province of Lucca, and sponsored by Monini S.p.A., Attilio Bindi and Henraux S.p.A., touched Pietrasanta and Marina di Pietrasanta, mainly the cathedral square and the old city centre, the church and cloister of Sant’Agostino, Laura Tartarelli Contemporary Art gallery and Piazza Leonetto Amadei, right in front of the pier in Marina di Pietrasanta, Lucca.
THE NEW SLABS SHOWROOM 2
In order to adapt to its production needs arising from increasing market demands, with reference to new programs and new business development strategies, Henraux completed the realisation of a significant corporate project that consisted of the renovation and expansion of an existing building, a vast warehouse built in 1976, which has undergone several modifications over the years.
The building was a rectangular industrial workshop with vaulted roofing, measuring about 1,500 square meters, originally used for the secondary processing of marble, polishing and packaging of finished products. The project is part of the plan initiated by President Paolo Carli to reorganize, redevelop and upgrade the company’s vast industrial complex in Querceta in the early 2000s, which has already thoroughly transformed the historic company to increase its competitiveness and ability to meet the major challenges of international markets.
The design, prepared by architect Enrico Carli, was conceived by reconciling the most modern construction technologies with the aesthetic requirements imposed by Henraux in other structures of its industrial complex: in the recently built showroom for the line of marble design products by the Luce di Carrara brand, in the renovation of the old sawmill intended for the activities of the Henraux Foundation, and in the building of the new company canteen. Thus, a single-story building of 3,810 sqm was built, an aesthetically pleasing structure consisting of two bays of about 2,300 sqm, the actual slab showroom, and a central bay of 1,510 sqm that serves the function of a pre-positioning area.
Completing the facility is an area dedicated to sculpture workshops (about 170 sqm), an exhibition, executive and service area on three levels (about 540 sqm) which is still under completion.
MEETINGS AT THE FONDAZIONE
HENRAUX: ARCHITECTURE, DESIGN, ART
The Fondazione Henraux hosted – in its premises in Querceta di Seravezza (LU) – two cultural events about the world of architecture, design and art. Both meetings took place in the premises of the Fondazione that are home to Henraux’s oldest part: it was actually the 19th-century sawmill – a charming example of industrial archaeology – as a completion of the already outstanding setting of the event (where the two exhibitions that celebrated the 200th anniversary of the collection were still open to the public).
The calendar – last 3rd and 10th September – saw prominent national and international figures from the world of art, architecture and design talk to and share views with each other and with the audience in interesting debates.
The guests of the first meeting were Marco Casamonti and Laura Andreini,
architects and cofounders of Archea Associati, Attila Veress, a designer and art director of the design brand Luce di Carrara, and Marva Griffin Wilshire, founder and curator of SaloneSatellite and International Press Director for the Milan Furniture Fair. The meetings were chaired by Aldo Colonetti, an internationally-renowned historian and philosopher of design.
In the premises in Querceta di Seravezza, the Fondazione Henraux hosted the second meeting too, which focussed on modern and contemporary art. Paolo Carli, President of Henraux and Fondazione Henraux, whose intention has always been to open the company and the Fondazione to young talents – and who attended both meetings –sat next to Michele Coppola, Executive Director of Art, Culture and Historic Heritage at Intesa Sanpaolo, a bank institution that supported
the exhibition Collezione Henraux 1960-1970 at Gallerie d’Italia in Milan and at the Fondazione.
Then, as experts, Luca Beatrice, an Italian art critic, film historian, curator and academician, Edoardo Bonaspetti, Art Director of Fondazione Henraux, and Costantino Paolicchi, a writer and historian of Versilia. Roberto Bernabò, chief digital development manager Class Editori, chaired the meeting on 10th September.
As an essential and ubiquitous feature of the area, marble is used by Henraux in ways that very few companies can put together: architecture, design and art are actually in the DNA of a 200-year-long story on the backdrop of great passion and expertise, combined with the possibilities of substantial, long-sighted investments and an outlook that is constantly open to disciplines and languages that, though different, are joined together by the same material.
Such meetings have been unique opportunities to listen to and talk about the culture of marble, the history of architecture and design, career advice for young people and the themes that have made this place and Henraux one of the main heralds of the Italian Made all over the world.
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