PRESENZE. Scultori in Versilia negli anni ottanta

PRESENZE. Sculptors in Versilia in the 1980s

From April 29 to September 24, 2023

The 1980s marked the definitive establishment of the art and sculpture district that is the area from  Pietrasanta, to Querceta, Seravezza, and Carrara and Massa.

The marble workshops and foundries, with the very high quality of their production, became a pole of attraction for artists and sculptors from all over the world. Alongside them, many sculptors born at the foot of the Apuan Alps, who often learnt their trade as boys in the workshops, discovered their vocation as authentic artists.

Some of them are no longer with us, and their memory is in danger of fading away: too few are the occasions and places where their works are exhibited, where their memory is kept alive.

This is why the exhibition PRESENZE. Sculptors in Versilia in the 1980s was created. The collected sculptures tell the story of those years through the work of nine artists: Gigi Guadagnucci, to whom a special space is dedicated because of the role he played in the birth of the Foundation, Arturo Carmassi, Pietro Cascella, Pino Castagna, Daniel Couvreur, Jan Dries, Nardo Dunchi, Gio' Pomodoro and Viliano Tarabella.

All of them have worked and lived in this art district, and have left works here that dot the territory in a sort of diffuse museum. They are also among the protagonists of ASTRATTO MONUMENTALE, the volume produced in 2010 by the ARKAD Foundation and edited by Valentina Fogher.

PRESENZE was part of the programme of Ritorno agli '80, an exhibition-event organised by the Fondazione Terre Medicee, Seravezza.

Cristina CONTI
Curator ARKAD Foundation

Click on the button to download the exhibition's catalogue.