Large spaces for the vertical sculpture of Atchugarry

For the exhibition in the Sala delle Cariatidi at Palazzo Reale, the artist has recreated his sculptor's studio.


Ada Masoero

Raggiungiamo Pablo Atchugarry (Montevideo, Uruguay, 1954) while he is engaged, with the curator Marco Meneguzzo, to show his great exhibition "Vita della materia" in the Sala delle Cariatidi di Palazzo Reale and in the nearby rooms, which will be on view from October 27 to January 30.

Of the more than 40 works chosen for this exhibition, some are made in bronze, with the ancient technique of Persian wax, then worked with primary colors, others are in alabaster, others still in wood and one, in olive wood, was made specifically for this show. The artist says: "I have also used wood in the past, but today I use it more often (always using already dead trees, of course) to denounce deforestation and environmental damage".

These works find their place in the spaces next to the Sala delle Cariatidi, in one of which the artist's studio has been built ("not everyone knows about a sculptor's studio," he says, " and we wanted to reproduce it by bringing here objects and work tools from my studio. C'è persino la mia sedia preferita"), while in the immense, lofty Sala delle Cariatidi are exposed the sculptures made with their predilected colors: the statuary of Carrara, the pink of Portogallo, the gray bardiglio and the black of Belgio.

"My sculpture is very vertical, says Atchugarry, and it is exciting to see it in this grandiose space. For all the works I wanted an illumination from below, like that of the Cariatidi: a play of lights that creates a dance between present and past, as if the time and the history of this room so rich of suggestions (I think, among others, of the Picasso exhibition of 1953) were playing with the works".

Works that (fact for not very frequent) are all personally chosen by the artist: "Towork him personally is a fundamental point for me, affirms deciso. The artist who limits himself to be a designer cannot follow the passages of the material, nor can he realize the changes that the material itself suggests. They are dramatic moments, which (as it happens to Michelangelo with the "Pietà Rondanini") impose to revolutionize the project. No one else could do it, let alone a robot. My sculpture is like a child who has to grow with his father".

Italy? "It was my destiny," concluded the artist, now famous around the world, who next January will inaugurate a large museum in his foundation in Punta del Este, Uruguay. I am 12 years old and at school I talked about Italy. I quote the caves of Carrara and Lake Como. Today I use the Carrara marble and I live most of the year in Lecco, on that lake. A premonition".

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Starting this Thursday, Independence Square will have a work by Pablo Atchugarry

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"Vita della Materia": the exhibition of Atchugarry at the Palazzo Reale di Milano