2022
PONDERA VERBORUM 5 notebook of arts and cultures
a project by Alessandro Chiodo
SPECIAL Giuseppe Agnello
AMONG EROS, BAROQUE AND ROCOCO
Beatrice Taponecco and her sculptures
by Alessandro Chiodo
ARUNTICA ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS, CARRARA
Presentation of Beatrice Taponecco’s work
Polo delle Arti San Martino
11th of June 2021
Curators:
Piergiorgio Balocchi and Massimo Bertozzi
Introduction by Pier Giorgio Balocchi for Accademia Aruntica
Dear friends of Accademia Aruntica, I am very pleased to present the work of Beatrice Taponecco at this meeting.
Beatrice is a lovely and sophisticated woman; she is both a mother and a professor: a very pleasant and reassuring woman.
However, she is also a young woman with a strong passion for mountaineering… so much so that in her few free moments she is involved in tiring uphill marches, usually burdened with a rucksack ‘worthy of an alpine man’ and very busy with audacious climbs on peaks and summits that a Sienese like me, accustomed to the quietness of the hills… just thinking about them makes me turn pale… and having proud and tough friends as climbing companions, with whom she can boldly confront herself.
And she is above all a sculptor… a creator of marvelous forms, sculpted and polished with strength and love… from blocks sometimes so large that they would make a hewerman turn pale… that this apparently slender woman (like a reed, but of steel like a samurai’s sword) faces with a cheeky, easygoing smile, with gaiety, joy and determination.
It has been 27 years since I presented one of my works at the first meeting of the ‘renewed Aruntica’… since then I have presented colleagues, friends and students: but never before has it been as joyful as it is this evening to offer you the work of a sculptor whom I esteem and admire as the latest and most scintillating artist of the ‘School of Carrara’: where marble is ‘made’ with profound and ancient craftsmanship, from Guadagnucci onwards… and where everyone is proud of their ‘wisdom of the hands’.
Today we are here having a dialogue and, naturally, Beatrice is all dressed up as one would expect of a young woman at such meetings: but if tomorrow you walk through the door of the laboratory next door, the cooperative of the sculptors of Carrara… you will find her (like Bartolini and Canova) covered in the white marble dust of her art… busy handling the tools of the trade with delicacy and wisdom… creating magnificent sculptures.
Pier Giorgio Balocchi, professor emeritus of the academy of Carrara, member of the academy of the arts of drawing in Florence.
ChiudiPresentation by Massimo Bertozzi for Accademia Aruntica
When a leaf sprouts, it is as if nothing happens: one waits, like insects, for the flowers to bloom, for the fruit to ripen.
It is rather when a leaf dies that complicated and worrying thoughts creep into everyone’s thoughts.
A leaf that is born has no history, a leaf that dies is an accomplished experience and has shaped its own destiny.
Exactly like the leaves that Beatrice Taponecco has been sculpting for some time.
What we have here is a large, soft, smooth leaf, free of veins, floating in the air, as if folded in on itself, but without curling up, which is supported in its upward thrust by the impetuous development of a wave, while at the other end it folds its wings, while the movement is completely reabsorbed by a brief suction of the form, which forces the foam to become marble again.
A shape from which emanates an almost impalpable yet persistent luminosity, nourished by the interweaving of a silk-thin warp with a soft and vaporous weft, which does not intend to renounce its consistency, like a powder even when it is forced to incinerate in the most hidden folds, where the darkest shadows are repressed.
The simple silhouette, as always the forms of nature, of the leaf nevertheless remains enclosed in a contour line, fluid and uninterrupted, even at the tips, which round off and curve with rhythm and harmony, in a continuous articulation of open surfaces, which develop almost without edges, as the corners have been smoothed, softened or rounded off altogether.
Hidden in this development is an ancient wisdom, the broad way of the sculptural art, the ability to create, even in hard material, the plastic development of a lightness without rigidity, suited to a form so alive that it does not rest in its skin, smoothed by the wind, consumed by water, calcined by the sun, like a cuttlefish bone.
One thus discovers an almost animal body, in this form that should be a vegetable form. A form in which a sense of stillness is established, but not quite of serenity, as there is still an atmosphere of suspension that one can feel evaporating, as if in eager anticipation.
Perhaps of another ‘blizzard hitting the hard leaves of the magnolia’.
Massimo Bertozzi
Chiudi2020
COMBAT PRIZE publication of the work “Self Portrait” in the catalogue Combat Prize 2020
“DE AQUA ET TERRA” finalist in the sculpture competition promoted Ferrara Plain Drainage Consortium.
CORTI MILANO 1st PRIZE in the competition promoted by Cittamoderna real estate boutique and Brera Academy of Fine Arts, for the creation of a work of art to be located in the courtyard of the building in via Manzoni, 38 Milan, in the Milan fashion district.
Jury members: Prof. Stefano Pizzi and Prof. Roberto Priod of the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, Dr. Annalaura di Luggo and the architect Paolo Asti.
Press
2019
ITALIAN STREGA PRIZE 1st Prize in the Competition of Ideas promoted by the Bellonci Foundation and BPER Bank for a work recognized for the five finalists in the Strega Prize
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UNESCO PRIZE Carrara Città Creativa V edition, finalist at the Competition FICLU International Forum of young sculptors of the marble of Carrara
SERGIO DATI PRIZE – Carrara Giorni d’Arte 1°PREMIO
INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION ROUTES OF SCULPTURE 1st PRIZE promoted by the “ElettoArtTour” Association and sponsored by “Studi d’Arte Cave Michelangelo (Art studies Michelangelo caves)” for a sculpture for the internal courtyard of the San Jacopo Hospital in Pistoia.
In the jury: Prof. Giovanna Uzzani, curator of the competition; Giovanna Giusti, former head of the ‘900 sector of the Uffizi Gallery; Andrea Aleardi, Director of the Michelucci Foundation; Simone Guaita, Director of the “Il Bisonte” Foundation; the managers of the Hospital of Pistoia and PHD Emanuele Greco, members of the jury, guests of the Gori family at Villa Celle, Pistoia.
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2018
COMPETITION OF IDEAS promoted by the Italian Alpine Club and the Academy of Fine Arts of Carrara, 1st PRIZE and creation of the “fountain for the rediscovered staircase” dedicated to the quarrymen and to the precious good of water, project financed by the Carrara Savings Bank Foundation and sponsored by the Carrara dei Marmi UNESCO Club.