Mastering the materials

I have a love affair going.  It is sadly, not with a large cuddly man, but with a small town in Italy, Pietrasanta. I often come here to recharge my batteries as it has the most perfect piazza in the world to watch the world go by, and that also houses the Bar Michelangelo, aptly named for this town where Michelangelo apparently worked and where a small chapel nearby on a hill top has a view of the hole where legend has, he removed his marble piece for the David.

It is a town that also hosts the studios and foundries that over the last centuries have produced great sculptures.   I have come this time for an opening of a show by members of the Royal Society of British Sculptors who have lived and worked in this town. 

 The show is held in the cloisters of a church off the piazza. There is wonderful work here.  The star work for me, not surprisingly, is a large work, Struggle by Helaine Blumenfeld, an artist who has been working in Pietrasanta for many years.  Her work shows the potential of the material illuminating both its strength and fragility. The material’s translucent quality can be  seen through the precarious thin-ness of the stone – without losing its internal inherent strength. The piece highlights this artist’s technical prowess without losing the vital appearance of spontaneity.  There is nothing apparently highly labored here, just fluid curves and gracefulness.  A wonderful work highlighting an artist in her prime.

Walking into the cloister is another processional work that shows promise, by Lars Widenfalk, a Norwegian artist.  Here in a play on the caryatids a row of half size figures, their scale not belying the strength demonstrated in their large and muscular hands.  Their bodies are left raw- reminiscent of the wonderful Michelangelo Slaves while their heads, detachable from their necks in a  recall the now headless caryatids.  I like the work in its situation, ushering us the viewer into the central area.

A permanent work by the entrance by the long term resident Gonzalo Fonseca reminds you of the power of materiality with its stone looking like a large meteorite that has fallen to earth, sad and melancholic in its darkness.

I have seen lively and promising drawings of lively birds by Almuth Tebbenhoff In a restaurant in the centre of the town.  Her piece in the Goodwood Sculpture Park of graceful seed-heads has always been a favorite of mine.  Here her work seems to be looking at the same subject from inside out.

There is plentiful figurative work here as well including the Dutch artist Eppe de Haan whose work highlights the beauty of the stone in its seemingly minimal interventions with the materials purity struggling with the sensuality of form exposed in a tantalizing glimpse of torso or bottom.

The show held in the cloister area exposes the struggle inherent in coming to terms with this material that is so magical yet so palpably difficult.  It is a tussle that is not always pretty and there is some work here that reflects the difficulty, turning hard stone into something resembling marshmallow fluff.   But what makes this show well worth seeing is the variety of work that is being made with a rigour and a desire to create something in a material that is difficult and challenging and while not always successful reminds one that the life of an artist is not only about self obsession and parties but about the need to make something of substance and beauty and in rare cases as in Blumenfeld’s work both.