Mario Vescovi (zandobbio, 1896 – Como, 1976), Maternity

Mario Vescovi (Zandobbio, 1896 – Como, 1976)

Maternity

Monolith white stone from Madesimo, 40 x 12 x 14 cm

Published in P. Moscow, Art and Costume in Bergamo. Nineteenth-Nineteenth Century, Bergamo, Graphics and Art, p. 968

Mario Vescovi's Maternity presents itself as a refined synthesis of his poetics between raw material and spiritual feeling, offering a significant testimony to the stylistic signature of an author capable of breaking free from tradition to embrace a more intimate and versatile artistic vision. Trained at the prestigious Scuola dell'Accademia Carrara in Bergamo under the guidance of master Ponziano Loverini, Vescovi matured the rudiments of art in his father's workshop, in close contact with the family marble quarry. However, unlike his brother Tobias, Mario chose to take a less academic and more experimental path, aimed at investigating the becoming of form as a vehicle for the essence of the spirit. This research led him to choose as his working material the stones of his native valleys, stones collected from riverbeds, onyxes and stalactites, interpreting the material and seeking vital alternatives to traditional marble. In the monolith white stone sculpture of Madesimo analyzed here, this desire to indulge the intrinsic nature of the stone clearly emerges. The artist does not impose a preconceived form on the material, but seems almost to liberate the figure that already inhabits the stone, leaving large portions of the surface in their natural state, rough and irregular, to concentrate the plastic intervention on the essential faces and gestures. Maternity is resolved in a vertical development that follows the conformation of the monolith: the mother's face, with sweet and compound features that recall a timeless sacredness, leans with infinite tenderness towards the child. The drooping eyelids and the light smile suggest a dimension of silence and recollection, while the newborn's body appears almost wrapped and protected by a stone womb that becomes fabric, swaddle and shelter. The use of Madesimo white stone, with its warm veining and natural translucency, gives the work a soft light that enhances the delicacy of the smooth volumes, placed in contrast with the rougher areas of the base and back. This approach brings Vescovi's poetics closer to that of Alberto Meli, with whom he shares a love for the elements scattered throughout nature and the ability to transform poor or wild materials into sculptures of extreme refinement. Vescovi's career was marked by moments of great public recognition, such as the important 1958 exhibition at the Galleria Gussoni in Milan, which attracted the attention of national critics, or the group exhibitions with the brothers Tobia and Pier Angelo in the courtyard of Palazzo Frizzoni in Bergamo in the 1930s. Although the author of monumental and civil works of great impact, such as the Soldier protecting a woman with a child located in Zandobbio, it is in works like this Maternity that Vescovi reveals his most authentic nature: that of an artist-explorer who, through constant dialogue with stone, manages to give visible form to the invisible fabric of human affections.