MINO GABELLIERI: MATTER, CARNALITY AND AFFECTIONS

In a time of chaos and constant uncertainty, Mino Gabellieri’s (1944) sculpture touches the core of the human soul. His lifelong research celebrates humanity, femininity in particular, engaging with the key themes of motherhood and regeneration, body transformation, suffering, regrets, and hope.

Gabellieri’s work originates from the sculptural tradition and Impressionist aesthetics of the late 19th century, and it draws inspiration from such masters as Rodin, Medardo Rosso, and Arturo Martini. Moreover, his poetics of the unfinished also reaches to the beginnings of art, to the fertility representations of the Neolithic period, encompassing forms between the figurative and the abstract, now rounded, soft and well-polished, now barely hinted at with their rough surfaces. Purposely presenting the traces of time passed, the original shapes of the stones are molded to represent the outline of entwined lovers, enigmatic faces and voluminous bodies.

“Volumes and bodies, encounters and embraces, tensions and emotions which have already been experienced or are yet to be lived.” 

Cuts and incisions, rounded and generous forms. A continuous return to the material to extract, redefine and smooth as if it were a physical relationship between the sculptor's hands and the stone.

Each of his statues is a testament to the arduous investigative gesture of sculpting, guided by the artist’s exploration of his own feelings in the raw material. As sculptors from another era, Gabellieri lets his hands follow the material’s idiosyncrasies, veins, sheens, and shades. 

Along with various materials like a unique Sicilian red stone, most of the stones he works on speak of his origins, including the alabaster and panchino sandstone from Volterra, and green gabbro from the metalliferous hills in the Tuscan Antiapennine. Relying on a deep familiarity with the material, the artist enhances each of its peculiarities, the softness and porosity of alabaster, the primordial and essential flavour of the pietra panchina, or the density of the coarse-grained gabbro.

The timeless beauty of Tuscany and the region of Volterra brings together a variety of cultural ages and landmark moments in art history each still tangible in Gabellieri's corpus of work.

Graduating from the historical Istituto d’Arte of Volterra (Pisa) with Carlo Calò and Mino Trafeli, Mino Gabellieri identifies the Etruscan city and its history as a key cultural reference for his work in stone. He moved to Valsesia in the North of Italy in his twenties, where he actively participated in the Milanese cultural scene, particularly within the circle of the Accademia di Brera artists, to begin his prolific artistic and exhibition career. In parallel, he taught Arts in public schools. In 1992, he was nominated for the Mondadori Arte Prize, and in 1993 for the Paola Petrini International Prize in Cesenatico.

Now after years of several important shows always in northern Italy, Gabellieri's soul-stirring sculptures return to Volterra to be presented within the warm interiors of KALPA Galleries, where they could be almost have been born, with their raw beauty expressing perfectly the spirit and philosophy of the gallery, embracing the past and contemporaneity, roughness and sophistication. 

“Volterra stones have never left Mino Gabellieri’s hands and heart. The alabaster smoothness and the panchino roughness followed him when he came to the north of Italy, as so did a far echo of the Etruscans’ mysterious serenity." 

Photos of the artworks: Vittorio Marrucci for KALPA 

Photos of Mino Gabellieri in studio: Mario Balossini

Quotations from Emiliana Mongiat and Mario Giarda

KALPA INSTAGRAM