ART AND WINE

Ca’ del Bosco is a place where art and wine meet and coalesce with sculpture and the harmonious landscape.
SCULPTURE
PHOTOGRAPHY
SCULPTURE
"Wine is real value that gives us another reality."
Luigi Veronelli

Ca’ del Bosco takes to heart this pronouncement of Luigi Veronelli, one of the central players in the valorization and exposure of classic Italian food and wine in the late ‘80s, when he introduced the first works of art installed around the wine cellars in Erbusco.
The passion for art springs from its similarity to wine, a three-dimensional product that stimulates multiple senses: vision, olfaction and taste.
Maurizio Zanella’s predilection for sculpture is well served by the location, whose stunning landscapes provide the perfect setting for works of art. The works chosen express values and concepts associated with the natural cycles of the vineyards and their surroundings. With time, passion and creativity have been enhanced by a taste for challenges and intellectual provocation.

The works of art situated at Ca’ del Bosco are not part of a collection: all the artists’ works are site-specific, planned after having visited the winery, so that the art will interact with the natural beauty of its context.
Art has played a fundamental role in the growth of the winery since the 1980s, allowing Ca’ del Bosco to come into contact with people and worlds who prized quality wine and understood the added value of a cultural approach associated with the world of wine.
A decision that made it possible for the wines of Ca’ del Bosco to quickly earn a solid reputation, which over the years has grown into an indissoluble bond.
The resulting image is strong and long-lasting, of high cultural and economic quality, reflecting human ambition and perseverance.

EROI DI LUCE

Igor Mitoraj, 1991

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Artist

Eroi di luce is a head amputated by dream containing a head swathed like a mummy: the artist’s cruel yet sincere vision. “I don’t think of the observer”, says Mitoraj, “I express myself through fragments, because the unseen part is much more important”. His statue remains a luminous fragment, set apart from the cellar. Framing it is the sky, which at times seems to “light up” the white of the marble, and the green hilly outline of Ca’ del Bosco.

Igor Mitoraj was born in Oaderan, Germany; his mother was German and his father an officer in the Foreign Legion. He sur- vived the bombing of Dresden at the end of the war in 1945. He grew up in Wroclaw, studying under Tadeusz Kantor, then moved to Paris, taking courses at the Beaux-Arts, and later to Mexico, where he studied Aztec art. He spent his time between Montmartre, Soho and Greece, source of his most evident inspiration. He passes away on 2014.

CANCELLO SOLARE

Arnaldo Pomodoro, 1987

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Artist

The sculpture is a circular structure 5m in diameter opening into two semicircles weighing 25 hundredweights each. Its design was completed in 1987, while creation and installation concluded in 1993. The sculpture, positioned at the entrance to Ca’ del Bosco, was commissioned by Maurizio Zanella, who engaged sculptor Arnaldo Pomodoro to make a gate that would be an emblematic entry into the vineyards and the whole estate. This circular gate, with its arrow-like, outward pointing rays, is a symbolic consecration of the rapport between wine and art: a huge sun because, as Zanella states, “from the sun comes the real nourishment of the grape, whose own rays warm and illuminate the gentle Ca’ del Bosco hills.”

Arnaldo Pomodoro was born in the province of Rimini and, after studying architecture, debuted as a designer, decorator and craftsman of metal. In Milan he was a habitué of Brera Academy artistic circles in the 1950s and in 1954 began to exhibit in Italy and abroad. Many of his works can be seen today in cities worldwide and he is considered to be Italy’s greatest contemporary sculptor.

ELOGIO DELL'OMBRA

Bruno Romeda, 1994

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Artist

This sculpture “Elogio dell’ombra”, located in Ca’ del Bosco’s little lake, seems to serve as framework for predominating nature but at the same time, in a play of watery reflections, interlaces with the leaves and geometrically changes one’s view of the place. A feeling of lightness contrasts with the solidity of te sculture.

Bruno Romeda lives and works in France and New York as well as in his birthplace, Brescia. His works have been exhibited in the world’s top art galleries. Circles, squares and triangles are the favorite themes of a simple, almost primordial, repertory rendered in narrow strips of bronze of varying thickness. The lines they create seem to take inspiration from the Val Camonica rock engravings. The artist began to work “on site” in the early 1950s in Antibes, in contact with great geniuses like Picasso, and continued in the sixties in America when minimalism was at its height. His spare and lightweight works, made up of full and empty spaces, are designed to blend in with the landscape and natural surroundings.

CODICE GENETICO

Rabarama

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Artist

The sculpture appears to be in a condition of equilibrium or slow reawakening from a state of conscious, as well as bodily, drowsiness. The squatting figure clasps herself as she hunches in a foetal position and seems to be stretching slowly. The face evokes delicacy and a fragility of the soul that is powerfully reinforced by a very special “skin” of coloured jigsaw-puzzle pieces. This scaly epidermis harbours hidden codes and languages. It is a protecting screen, a route to be decoded or a map to be read. The pieces are a filter, separating interior from exterior, even as they outline the figure’s nakedness.

abarama is the nom d’art of Paola Epifani, born in Rome in 1969. From a young age, she showed a natural talent for sculpture and at the age of ten, took part in the International Exhibition for the 30th Anniversary of NATO. After attending art school, she went on to the “Academy of Fine Arts of Venice”, graduating in 1991. She is known for her sculptures based on the human figure with their remarkable intensity of expression. Her giant bronze and aluminium works are generally floor-mounted. Rabarama’s sculptures are nearly always decorated with patterns, textures or drawings, which on her metal sculptures are coloured by hand. Since 2000, her works have been exhibited at prestigious museums in Italy and abroad, particularly in the USA and Paris.

IL PESO DEL TEMPO SOSPESO

Stefano Bombardieri, 2003

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Artist

The work’s positioning “Il peso del tempo sospeso” at the entrance to the cellar is striking and disorienting. A life-size rhinoceros hanging from the ceiling, a witty hyperrealist joke. The animal symbolizes vitality and energy yet here it is harnessed and suspended, as if to make us think about the meaning of the still life in art, yet in the end shocking us and leaving an intense and violent impression.

Stefano Bombardieri was born in Brescia, son of sculptor from whom he first learned about artistic techniques and materials. But his expressiveness was nurtured by his youthful experiences working at the Gardaland amusement park, where he learned the secrets of constructing whales, rhinoceros and imaginary or prehistoric sea monsters. Everything needed for spectacular fun, encouraging him to become a great jester in art. He amazes and amuses us but at the same time makes us think about seemingly banal aspects of life, teasing our rationality. Hence the surprising placement in the Ca’ del Bosco cellar, midway between deliberate symbolism and subtly playful intent.

IL DIONISO

Bruno Chersicla, 1985

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Artist

Chersicla transforms the god Dionysus into an amusing mask, into a clown issuing from a flûte glass. The design seems almost inspired by a Gothic window where, once opened, the grapes and leaves crowning his head appear to branch out like vine shoots. The ironic and absolutely spare style expresses the naturalness of the god of wine while emphasizing his joviality, lightheartedness, jesting and prankishness, as intuited from his arch expression.

Born in Trieste, he has lived in Milan since 1966. He has created public works of exceptional caliber ranging from wooden sculpture to xylography. In contemporary sculpture the artist’s works are constructed, in the sense that they open  being articulated  to form different images made of pieces of cut, smoothed and colored wood that become almost mechanical parts leaving room for new interpretations. Craftsmanship and modernity interweave in the movement, becoming a play of shapes. Among his best-known works are the sculpted doors at Savini restaurant in Milan and the Dionysus Gualtiero Marchesi displays at his Il Marchesino.

BLUE GUARDIANS

Cracking Art, 2010

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Artist

In 2009, Maurizio Zanella asked the Cracking Art group to create an animal that would blend perfectly into the setting of vineyards and woodlands on his Erbusco estate. Thus was born the idea of the wolf, in this case a vigilant but benevolent guard wolf. The drawing traced the outline of an almost priest-like wolf, softened by a fleeting, ironic smile. Sketches were turned into physical forms to create Blue Guardian, in a blue that deliberately “breaks” with Ca’ del Bosco’s colours.

Cracking Art, the art group founded in 1993, brings together six artists (Nucara, Veronese, Angi, Rizzetti, Kicco and Sweetlove) who each express themselves in strong individual languages. The process of catalytic cracking takes oil, the oldest natural material in the universe, and transforms it from a natural substance into an artificial one to make it a sculptable, recyclable material. Cracking Art creates shapes that mimic nature through animals communicating an “indestructible optimism”, as critic Piero Adorno called it.

GRAVITY AND UNTITLED COLUMN

Rado Kirov, 2014

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Artist

Rado’s new found passion for sculpture and his mastery of stainless steel are expressed in this new medium, which he has called the Mercury effect.

Rado Kirov was born in Bulgaria in 1955. Rado began an extensive apprenticeship in copper smithing at the age of 25 in the town of Dobrich Bulgaria under tutelage of Alexander Raev, one of the greatest craftsmen in Bulgaria at the time. Rado’s passion and skill in copper, shifted to silver and gold. Over the last 15 years, Rado gradually shifted his creative focus to product design and functional art working extensively with interior designers and architects. Rado Kirov developed a unique technique of manipulating a sheet of stainless by hand, using the inherent physical properties of the metal to create a striking three-dimensional surface that dynamically mirrors its surronding and draws the observer into the magic of its reflection.

EGG CONCEPT

Spirito Costa, 2014

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Artist

Egg Concept is made with more than 6,000 eggshells. The central element of Egg Concept is a perfect egg on an articulated base, which forms an integral part of the work itself. From the aesthetic point of view, Egg Concept fits into the Arte Povera tradition for its use of low-cost, recycled, everyday materials and into Conceptual Art as it is a meditation on the concept of art and art’s role.

Spirito Costa is from Brazil, which has given him a heightened sensitivity to all things ecological. He has experienced the trauma of the Amazionian forest at first hand and, to encourange reflection onwhat is a kay issue for the continued existence of the entire planet, he has created “Egg Concept”. Its message is universally accessible thanks to the widely dominant symbolism of the egg, shared over the centuries by almost every culture.

WATER IN DRIPPING

Zheng Lu, 2016

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Artist

Water in dripping continues the intrinsic link between the sculptures and the literary texts that inspire their creation. The artist appropriates a poem composed by Pai Chu-I (also known as Bai Juyi), a renowned poet of the Tang Dynasty as the basis of the textual component in this piece of art. Exploring the locomotion of the nature of water and embedded within the sculptural shape, therein lies the chosen poem that speaks of a symbolic voyage of nature and mobility. Looming and graceful but nevertheless inviting, it is also notable that the installation is lit with low-dimmed lighting that at once glows and dramatizes the contours of the overall construction.

Zheng Lu was born in 1978 in Chi Feng, Mongolia. He studies sculpture at the Lu Xun Fine Arts Academy and he specializes firstly at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, then in France where in 2006 he obtains the Scolarship Prix LVMH at the ‘École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-arts in Paris. Among the prizes he won, the Inspired Performance Journey, the Gran Premio INFINITI, 4° place at the competition Design For Sitting in 2009, the Prize Best Tecnique and the Prize LVMH Young Artist “Homage to the Impressionists” in 2005.

ZOLLA NATURA

Bertozzi & Casoni, 2017

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Artist

Over the years, the artists have followed a line of inquiry that focuses attention on pieces of nature, a sort of imaginary sample swatch where a magnifying glass enlarges that which the earth can contain, a sort of memory of man’s passing. This clump of earth makes us think about the esthetic aspect of enlarging a piece of soil, with little flowers, lost fragments of human activity, with color and shape their only remaining properties, books lost and found that tell of a temporary knowledge, grass, rocks: an imaginary world rich with sensations. In the center of this microcosm is a bottle, which enshrines all of these sensations in itself.

Bertozzi & Casoni was founded in Imola in 1980, by Giampaolo Bertozzi (1957) and Stefano Dal Monte Casoni (1961). Even in the first years of their artistic development, their interest gravitated towards a dialogue with the great artistic tradition, cultivating an inherent proclivity for experimentation in the field of sculpture and identifying ceramics as a material that makes painted sculpture possible. Among the highlights of past exhibits: Tate Liverpool (2004), Sperone Westwater, New York (2005, 2010, 2015), Ca’ Pesaro, Venice (2007), Castello Sforzesco, Milan (2008), Venice Biennale (2009), Venice Biennale (2011), All Visual Arts, London (2012), Museum Beelden aan Zee, the Hague, and Beck & Eggeling, Düsseldorf (2013), Palazzo Te, Mantua (2014), Expo, Milan and Mambo, Bologna (2015), GAM, Palermo (2016), Museo di Palazzo Poggi, Bologna, and the Pinacoteca Civica, Ascoli Piceno (2017).

TESTIMONE

Mimmo Paladino, 2017

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Artist

Its imposing presence pays homage to the Testimoni born in limestone in 2009 from the echoes of the celebrated Mothers of Capua’s Museo Campano. Here it keeps vigil over time and history. Its iconic power, unarmed and disarming, protects the precious treasure contained in the bottles resting in the shadows.

Mimmo Paladino was born in Paduli (Benevento) in 1948 and currently works in both his hometown and Rome. He is one of the leading representatives of Transavantgarde, the artistic movement theorised in 1980 by art critic Achille Bonito Oliva receiving full recognition in the Aperto section of the Venice Biennale of that same year. The artists part of the movement advocated a return to painting as opposed to the de-materialization embraced by Minimalism and Conceptual Art. Over the 1980s Paladino’s artistic research integrated abstract visuals with elements of figuration. By exploring myth and honing archetypical figures, Paladino postulates an archaic, Mediterranean, oneiric art centred on the theme of memory and fragment. His statues are icons, antique geometrical masks, forming an alphabet of signs framed in a cyclic pattern of return. His 1990s Mountain of Salt installation in Piazza del Plebiscito in Naples, with warrior figures and large horses emerging from the white pile of salt remains one of his most memorable works.

SOUND OF MARBLE

TSUYOSHI TANE, 2021

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Artist

The concept of Sound of Marble is based on the interaction between marble, sound and light. The work investigates the ancestral qualities of stone related to the innovative challenge of making very thin walls that are both curved and self-supporting. Once inside the artwork, the artist's idea is to amplify the sounds of nature, such as those of wind and birds, through the shape and thickness given to the marble itself. In addition, the type of marble chosen, Estremoz, is able to take on different colors through the veins in the stone that change their appearance with the rain.

Tsuyoshi Tane is a Japanese architect working in Paris. He graduated from Hokkaido Tokai University in 2002 and has gained professional experience in London, Denmark and Japan. Tsuyoshi Tane is considered one of the exponents of the new generation of emerging architects who create architecture guided by the memory of a place, the idea on which his concept of “archaeology of the future” is based. With Tsuyoshi Tane, memory is once again an indispensable value for building the future with signs that are pregnant with meaning, alternative to the votive identities and rapid information flows of the contemporary world. Places always have memories deeply embedded in the ground. This process of thinking deeply, from the past towards the future, slowly transforms archaeology into architecture.

Ludoscopio

Paolo Scirpa, 2020

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Artist

The latest in a series of “Ludoscopes” created since the early 1970s, the Ludoscope installed in Ca' del Bosco, in the Senses Dome, does not highlight emptiness as “absence,” but as essence and insubstantial presence not yet defined and yet visible in the intimate dimension of space. It is a suspended condition, with a temporary temporariness, shattered and reduced to pieces, born to be “infinite.” An insubstantial vision of incorporeal presences that take form through the use of real light. The virtual containers from the primary form, through the use of neon light and mirrors, transform and alter the geometric form by disproportionately multiplying the functionality in a synthetic space-light.

He was born in Siracusa (Sicily) in 1934. From the beginning he showed his aptitude for art by entertaining painting studies between Palermo and Catania, also attending for a long time the graphic workshops in Salzburg where he met John Friedlander in whose studio he would later work in Paris. In '65 he moved to Milan where he made his first “Sole” works linked to a lyrical expressionism but already oriented toward a formal synthesis. In 1972 he made “Megalopoli Consumistica” a work of consumerist denunciation composed of a large number of empty wrappings and containers assembled together. Scirpa's work has always tended toward an inner quest, untethered from any relationship of belonging. In the 1970s he shifted from a two-dimensional iconography to the modularity of an object space that light and mirrors transformed into poly-objects. His research is oriented toward a dimension in which light and space become immaterial and spectacular protagonists. It was in 1972 that the Master began the creation of the Ludoscopes, three-dimensional works that, by means of a system of combinatorial games of neon and mirrors, propose the perception of fictitious depths, true light-hyperspaces in which the limit between the real and the illusory is abolished. It was during these years that Scirpa met and frequented the exponents of optic-kinetic art and MAC, including Maestro Bruno Munari, who within his writings would also highlight the playful aspect of the artist's work. In his Ludoscopes the artist is interested in representing not so much real light as “ideal” light, that is, the idea of infinity. In the 1980s the first design interventions on the territory began, gigantic Ludoscopes are introduced through photomontages in: buildings, monuments, archaeological sites and cities, creating dizzying perspective escapes within the landscape. To this day Scirpa continues his work of research and experimentation, proposing works and projects that are always current and avant-garde. He has been a lecturer at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts. He lives and works in Milan.