BULLETTIN

Bulletin

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HENRAUX 2018 SCULPTURE PRIZE FOURTH EDITION

The fourth edition of the Henraux Prize was held in the summer of 2018. It was a special year full of emotions that saw radical changes in the jury membership starting with its president, Edoardo Bonaspetti, who was joined by other authoritative names in international contemporary art: Ilaria Bonacossa, director of Artissima, Eike Schmidt, director of the Uffizi Gallery, Roberta Tenconi, curator at the Pirelli HangarBicocca Foundation and Andrea Viliani, director of the Madre, Donnaregina Museum of Contemporary Art. Cristiana Perrella, director of the Pecci Center in Prato, arrived at the Accademia dell’Altissimo, while Jean Blanchaert, Aldo Colonetti, Mikayel Ohanjanyan and Costantino Paolicchi were re-elected from the previous edition. From the seventy-seven artist candidates - from Italy and abroad: Spain, France, Bulgaria, Austria, England, Ukraine, Belgium, Poland, South Korea, Armenia, Turkey, China, Japan, Russia and the United States - the nominated winners were Francesco Arena, David Horvitz and Diego Marcon. Exceptionally, a special mention was also given to the Anto. Milotta / Zlatolin Donchev collective. If certain cornerstones of the competition have remained unchanged - such as the opportunity for the winners to carry out their projects in collaboration with the engineers and workers of Henraux, working marble in the quarries and in the company’s plants within the historic district of Querceta of Seravezza - there have been numerous and profound new innovations. It is clear that a breath of fresh air has arrived from the words that Bonaspetti himself uses in the catalogue published for the occasion: “The Henraux Prize is an ambitious and articulated project, aimed at developing research in the potential of marble. The properties of this material are not only linked to sculpture in the traditional sense but to innovative fields of thought and creation”. In fact, the winning works which will, for two years, until the next edition, represent Henraux in the world, express a new vision and send a strong and clear message: the celebration of the history and technique of the company, focal point of the past editions, now leave a place for a new symbolic universe that has more to do with innovation, with excellence and with an international horizon. In a word: with the future. Because it is to this, but also to much more intangible, more closely linked to the dimension of enchantment, that the most modern contemporary art, the newest expressive languages, give access: a world full of signs which a company like Henraux - full of history and stories to tell - can draw on to enrich its identity. “The preciousness of marble, its intrinsic material values have stimulated different forms of planning and creativity. The Henraux Prize, created to unite the White of Altissimo with the essence of the territory, presented the work of four artists who experiment with different conceptual ideas, but who traced in marble a fundamental stimulus to be transformed into sculpture”. commented Paolo Carli, the President of Henraux and Henraux Foundation. All that remains is to wait for the appointment of the Prize’s fifth edition, a real and true preview of the celebrations for the company’s two hundred years of history.

Clockwise from the top:

Francesco Arena, Metro cubo di marmo con metro lineare di cenere (Cubic meter of marble with linear meter of ash), 2018, Bianco Altissimo, cigar ash, cm 100 x 100 x 100

David Horvitz, A Mountain / A Sea, 2018, Statuario Altissimo, various dimensions

Anto. Milotta - Zlatolin Donchev, Libro di vetta (Summit book), 2018, Arabescato Cervaiole, cm 100 x 9 x 55

Diego Marcon, Ludwig, 2018, Statuario Altissimo, cm 3 x 49 x 179

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LUCIO MICHELETTI

Lucio Micheletti, Vento

Lucio Micheletti is an architect, designer and artist. A true crossdisciplinary figure. Coming from the automotive world, he engaged in the nautical design industry for just under ten years - where he became the bearer of surprising visions - he also has a precise artistic identity that favours the language of sculpture.

Which of these definitions does Micheletti recognize most? Talking about myself is always difficult, complex, perhaps because despite being an architect and designer and my studio work in different sectors - from hotel and theatre projects to design - I consider myself mostly an artist. I love travelling with the headlights off and working with my team, dedicating myself only to the design, made up of signs and thoughts, technology and studies around the subject of man.

After two years of planning, Canova, the new Baltic 142 yacht, will be launched in June. Can you tell us something about this project? Every single boat has its own comfort that is dynamic and absolute, it has its own style, its own reading and its design path. The B142 is a boat designed to speak with the wind, equipped with DSS and electric motor, with a new vision of sail plan, it brings comfort to the sea. We designed and followed the construction of 142 shaping empty and full volumes, by speaking and presenting the boat we realized that by changing the matter, the point of view, people start listening to your vision. I always thought it was important to offer another perspective, another view.

What new perspectives does the Baltic 142 bring? During January, at the Düsseldorf Boat Show, we presented the project to the press, I felt the need to bring attention to design as an element of balance, capable of recalibrating spaces and mitigating technology. There is something in these spaces that gives you energy which creates well-being. For me it had become important to transmit this, to communicate it.

Also while in Düsseldorf, you chose to bring your own marble sculpture in order to present your work as a designer. Can you explain this choice to use the artistic language, and a

Lucio Micheletti

The Canova

material like marble, to express the language of design? After the Venice Biennale, and Open 20, to which I brought a marble sculpture, I decided to carry out a more complete and more open artistic discourse. In Düsseldorf, I prepared another work, of generous dimensions, once again in marble, which summarized my nautical work. I needed a sculpture, not just a model, I wanted a debate, a dialogue with people. I wanted to talk about shapes and profiles, about masses and voids. To recount how volumes interact with colours, materials and balance everything. This is our new and real challenge, balance, not perfection. I wanted to give a strong but light touching message to marble with its (in)sustainable lightness, it was perfect.

Our attention always falls on materials. Does your approach to them differ depending on whether you use them in design, architecture or art? I cannot make a clear distinction between architecture, design and sculpture. In naval architectural composition, we have to concern ourselves with increasingly sophisticated, light, almost metaphysical materials, in art it is different. The Henraux team taught me to read marble in a new way with unedited transparencies. I worked a lot on this boat (the Vento sculpture, editor’s note), but the hardest part was shaping it, making it dynamic. I work with carbon, with lightness, I use noble natural materials but always in search of lightness. When I talk about art, I think its strength lies in heaviness. I see a piece of art as an architectural object, which before being a decoration, has the function of bringing burdens to the ground. So why not make a sculpture that refers to the work done, the volumes drawn, the calculations passed on? To make a marble sculpture that in some way captures this work. A simple work made from the wind and the sea. The lightness of the message is enhanced by the heaviness of the material. I like to re-read volume with marble. It is a material that has an indelible, incredibly dramatic beauty. Perhaps art is a collateral beauty to our life. Canova is the name of the boat. The name of the artwork is Vento.

HENRAUX MARBLE IN SAN MINIATO

The monumentality of the Henraux Collection met, during these past winter months, the medieval charm of the squares, monuments and plasterwork of San Miniato, in a collective exhibition en plein air of marble sculptures, the work of contemporary artists, both Italian and international: Fabio Viale, Mattia Bosco, Giovanni Manganelli, Francesca Pasquali, Daniele Guidugli, Mikayel Ohanjanyan, Kim De Ruysscher, Park Eun Sun and Helidon Xhixha. In a joint interview we asked Paolo Carli, the President of Henraux, and Vittorio Gabbanini, the Mayor of the City of San Miniato, to describe the project that installed the collection of works of the Versilian Foundation - growing, with each consecutive edition of the Biennale Prize for sculpture - in the historic centre of the Tuscan village, transforming it into an expansive museum of contemporary sculpture. The exhibition gave birth to a historical-artistic journey, from antiquity to the future and in which it housed timeless beauty.

“The Henraux marbles in San Miniato”, a title and a project, how did this agreement between the Henraux Foundation and the San Miniato Municipality come about? Paolo Carli : The collection of works by the Henraux Foundation, which is becoming increasingly enriched with each edition of our biennial sculpture prize, continues to receive much acclaim in both the public and private sectors. The sculptures that make up the collection, which are almost all monumental, were particularly appreciated by the City of San Miniato, with whom we designed the exhibition. The mission of the Henraux Foundation is to make its sculptures accessible to the public and to present them in open and public spaces. It is for this reason that the project was born, it aims to transform the streets and squares of San Miniato into a temporary contemporary sculpture museum. Vittorio Gabbanini: We were invited to a Henraux Foundation event, it was an evening dedicated to marble and its multiple uses. When we came into contact with this world we realized the extraordinary beauty that brings this material closer to our region. So we began to think how it would be nice to create a journey through the art form of marble sculpture within the historic centre. And from this, everything started.

The contemporary forms of marble are

Mattia Bosco, Bue Tractor

shown on the streets of San Miniato through the works of the Henraux collection, how do they change the visual aspects of the streets and historical places of the city? P.C.: Even though Contemporary sculpture often represents singular subjects, abstract forms, even poor or unusual forms, it also retains an intrinsic value, which is that of the beauty of marble. The incredible quality of the sculptured stone Michelangelo part of the history of both San Miniato and Henraux, what is the role of the Divine sculptor in these two individual stories? P.C.: On around 1517 Michelangelo identified within Monte Altissimo, vast deposits of statuary: a beautiful finegrained and compact marble, which responded well to the chisel. In short, the ideal material for his works, the marble he had always dreamed of. In March 1518, he began the road that

makes the shapes precious. For these reasons, the works of contemporary artists create excellent connections between the past and the present, between the ideas of beauty and monumentality of past centuries and those ideas of today. Therefore the views of historical San Miniato enriched by the contemporary artistic language will certainly be a more complete vision. V.G.: Through the marble, the historical and artistic wealth of the streets of San Miniato is highlighted even more, and they are still the undisputed protagonists. There is no corner of the historic centre where there is not a piece of history, a fragment of art to be grasped and savoured. This is why the majesty and grandeur of such a precious material do nothing but highlight its already extraordinary qualities. proceeded towards Monte Altissimo in order to reach the quarries. But on 20 February 1520, Pope Leo X unexpectedly tasked Michelangelo with a “brief” and diverted him with the task of realizing the facade of San Lorenzo in Florence, which remained forever unfinished, and so the sculptor was forced to leave Versilia. Michelangelo, however, had already initiated the excavation of marble in Versilia and more than forty years later - in 1568 - Duke Cosimo I Medici opened Michelangelo’s road to the foot of Mount Altissimo, activating the historic caves of the “Gruppo Polla”. D’Annunzio described the Monte Altissimo as the “peplum of Nike”. For D’Annunzio, the “Altissimo” , the mountain of Michelangelo, it was the broken dream of an immense sculptor who saw within its marble depths “... a crowd of sleeping statues”.

From the left Fabio Viale, Arrivederci e grazie (Goodbye and thanks)

Daniele Guidugli, Moby Dick (vertebra)

Francesca Pasquali, Frappa

Right Park Eun Sun, Colonna infinita (Infinite Column)

V.G.: “In fifteen hundred and thirtythree I remember today how on the 22nd of September I went to Santo Miniato al Tedesco to speak to Pope Clement, who was going to Nice, and on that day Sebastiano del Piombo left me his horse”. It is precisely Michelangelo who writes about this meeting in his manuscripts. Pope Clement VII gives the Florentine artist the task of frescoing the Sistine Chapel during the meeting in San Miniato, a commission that was later confirmed by the later popes who succeeded one another. The Città della Rocca therefore deeply binds its name to the Florentine artist: to have marble works exhibited is a way to pay homage to his work and to all that it still represents today.

International contemporary artists show their extraordinary and monumental works in the streets of the city. Will future projects like this be created specifically for San Miniato? P.C.: We have received a fantastic welcome for our works in San Miniato. From the historical spaces that see a true union with our collection, to the will to make the project a real event for the city and its visitors. We hope that the marble is appreciated by the citizens of San Miniato and by tourists and that they represent an ideal complement to the beauty of the city, from which to bring forth new projects. V.G.: I truly hope so. San Miniato is an open-air stage, a place where art returns home. Every time we have opened exhibitions or installed outdoor art, we have had the good fortune of having a “living room” ready to welcome us, a historic centre with lots of available and beautiful spaces, just waiting to be, if possible, valued once more. A journey through marble is what we lacked and, thanks to Henraux, today we have achieved our great desire.

Aurelio Amendola and Paolo Carli during the set-up phase

Schiavo ribelle (Rebellious slave) staging phase

4FLESH AND SOUL. MICHELANGELO IN THE PHOTOS OF AURELIO AMENDOLA

Summer 2018 was both for Henraux and the Foundation, a moment of great excitement. In addition to the inauguration of the new showroom, whose project bears the signature of Studio Archea, and of the fourth edition of the International Sculpture Prize, itself a harbinger of many changes, the old sawmill was transformed into an evocative exhibition space that showcased Aurelio Amendola’s extraordinary photographs dedicated to Michelangelo.

Curated by the architect Mario Botta, the exhibition celebrated five hundred years of the transfer of Michelangelo from Carrara to Seravezza. We look back on this cherished moment with the texts that the curator Mario Botta and Paolo Carli wrote for the occasion.

MICHELANGELO: FLESH AND SOUL

BY MARIO BOTTA

Aurelio Amendola’s black and white photographs, on display in the Querceta “Antica Segheria” Henraux (Summer 2018), bring Michelangelo’s figures back into a friendly atmosphere. It is actually on the slopes of Mount Altissimo, just above Seravezza, that the Florence-born sculptor went looking for Statuary marble, the “live flesh” of the figures that he believed lived within the stone and that he brought back to life by removing the “superfluous”. Now, the photographs of those creatures speak of a veritable return home, after roaming for centuries and astounding other men, bewitched by the beauty, the talent, the power and the grace of those stones in which the flesh and soul are at one with each other; live creatures summoned out of the polished surfaces by the artist’s creative “breath”. The seduction of a timeless beauty resurfaces – unstoppable – from Amendola’s pictures engraved in black and white starkness, as a sort of absolute aspiration we still have an infinite need of, as we plod along this global world. The figures of the bodies are shapes that belong to our imagination and to our identity; relatable signs of Western culture, where one can still grow a ground of memory that can live on in this world. Our thanks go to Henraux, then, who knows how to preserve a centuriesold tradition, and to Amendola’s fascinating work, that for decades has been chasing lights and shadows through the mysterious turns that Michelangelo carries along in his poetic form.

“YOU AND ME”

BY PAOLO CARLI

When one speaks of marble and one speaks of art with the passion Aurelio has always put into its photos, something nice and sincere is bound to happen. The one with Aurelio is a recent, but deep, friendship, one that has also been made stronger by our views about Art, beauty, life, which are so similar, by our funny way of teasing each other, like Tuscans typically do. And it’s actually a joke that gave us the idea for this exhibition, Henraux’s ancient mill, with its peculiar lights and its weather-beaten walls, “Let’s take Michelangelo to Henraux, you and me!” … “you and me”, a motto that we have often repeated to remind ourselves of our goals, our vision, our wish to show the outstanding beauty of marble, each in his own way. In this truly special year that marks the 500th anniversary of Michelangelo’s arrival in Seravezza from Carrara (March 1518), I wanted to pay tribute to the Artist and to those who told about him in snapshots of undisputed force and beauty. A double tribute in a setting, Henraux’s ancient mill, that embraces and emphasises the black and white Aurelio loved so much. In photography, black and white symbolises memory, and for us at Henraux the mill is a place of memory, which brings us back to lived history, to a sense of belonging, of identity, and therefore to deep bonds.

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A DAY AT CAVA CERVAIOLE

Marble as the centrepiece of an event that celebrates the values and excellence shared by antoniolupidesign and Henraux

The Cervaiole quarry, located in the southern part of Monte Altissimo, is a magical, incredibly suggestive place. As you reach the top of the quarry, the view embraces a breathtaking landscape: from the Apuan Alps to the coast, stretching from La Spezia to Livorno, nature appears in all its overbearing beauty. It surrounds the composed and geometrically ordered volumes of marble pallets. It is from this quarry, a fine and refined marble, white and veined with grey, has been extracted for almost two hundred years, the Arabescato, to which the history of Henraux is inextricably linked: a stone of excellence through which the company for a long time discourses with the greatest architects and artists of our time, both in Italy and abroad. The meeting between Henraux and antoniolupi stems from this common root: the concrete appreciation for both

the material and the place of origin of the marble that we discover has also been the focal point of many of antoniolupidesign’s recent collections. The synergy between the two Tuscan companies resulted in a unique event: at the Cervaiole quarry, at the end of the summer of 2018. Antoniolupi hosted over 150 people to whom they presented some pieces of their collections, immersed in an almost surreal atmosphere. It was an ideal situation in which the purity of the material met the formal expression of the project expertly. In Cervaiole, a prestigious and striking setting, the charm and grandeur of the quarries have brought the original value of the material and the timeless appeal of the encounter between marble and design to the attention of the participants. The encounter between antoniolupidesign and Henraux did not give life only to a single event, but it also became a design meeting from which Plissé was born, a freestanding washbasin entirely made of Carrara marble. The object is part of a journey that has been traced for some time by antoniolupi and the designer Paolo Ulian to investigate the relationship between a natural material such as marble and digitally controlled machining techniques. The solidity of the material is softened by parallel signs that are repeated longitudinally on the surface. The traces of the work become ornamental, their development makes the structure lighter without relinquishing elegance. The volume of Plissé recalls the aesthetics of pleated fabric, with a vertical pattern, like a gathered piece, a surface that seems to move with lightness thanks to the variation of light and the play of light and shadow determined by the relief effect. It is an object with an iconic design that resembles nothing less than sculptural drapery.

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