Bruna Bertolo
Enzo Sciavolino’s biography

To follow the essential moments of Sciavolino’s life is to understand the background of his art and his choices. Enzo Sciavolino was born in 1937 in Valledolmo, a small village in the province of Palermo. He was born into a large family, where his father’s cultural and mental open mindedness strongly clashed with the destitute economic conditions of the environment. Valledolmo was similar to other Sicilian villages, being dominated by poor farmers at the end of their subsistence, and a social uneasiness due to the oppression and arrogance of the landowners. It is this environment that defines Enzo Sciavolino’s artistic roots, his political and ideological choices.

«There was an episode that I couldn’t forget, while I was attending elementary school: I remember a peaceful procession of labourers whom on a feast, symbolically took over some uncultivated land. What I particularly remember of this situation, was the violent intervention by the police, they started to beat against the labourers. A moment filled with joy suddenly turned into a painful and repressive one. There I decided what I would be for the rest of my life».

Sciavolino’s sicilian years were characterized by his education. He attended an oppressive and uninteresting school, but despite this he couldn’t stop the overpowering wave of his creativity. During sunny afternoons he frequented a carpenter’s shop, where Enzo enjoyed working and creating miniature objects and toys, manipulating materials in volumetric and plastic contents. While he attended high school and college in Cefalù he realized his deep need to escape from a place that was oppressive, and limited, a place which imposed religious and ideological certainties which Sciavolino would refuse for the rest of his life. In 1953 his life took a different turn. He decided to head towards north, to Turin, a city that for Sciavolino’s family represented “a myth”, that of work, of economic safety and of social acceptance.

«After passing a selective exam I was accepted into the Arts College. Then luck struck me and I was hired by Cinema Corso and Ambrosio as an ice cream seller! This allowed me to live and pay for my studies without any difficulties. The job gave me the economic safety I needed. In the last years of college I also managed to have my own studio where I started to create my works».

In 1959 Sciavolino presented his first solo exhibition, which drew a lot of attention from the public as well as the critics.

«The artists in Turin, the ones that influenced the market at that time were “interested” in me. In the Gazzetta del Popolo (a newspaper), the famous critic Luigi Carluccio published a flattering article, about my works and they offered me a contract with a renowned gallery in Turin. This was a big chance for me, but I refused, I didn’t want to constrain my artistic expression and homologate it for market needs».

The refusal had its consequences, it influenced the relation between Sciavolino and the art market, tagging him as a “subversive and a pain in the arse artist”, an uncomfortable figure, and this reputation has followed him into the present day. After his first solo exhibition, he decided to leave the scene once more and start afresh: Paris was a new place. It was the stage for new meetings with different artists which enriched his soul, and allowed him to live different experiences which led him to achieve what he loved most. In 1961 he returned to Turin, and met Elsa Mezzano, his life’s great companion, at present a successful professional in the field of photography.
The Sixties were years of great fervour and passion for everything that surrounded him bringing him closer to artistic enlightenment. He became one of the well known characters in the cultural and political scenery. His interests ranged from theatre, cinema and music, particularly jazz, his great passion (John Coltrane was an unforgettable experience for him in the 1960 in Paris).
He became friends with some of the most prominent voices of the great popular Sicilian soul, Rosa Balistreri, Cicciu Busacca and Ignazio Buttitta, whose creativity enchanted and moved him emotionally.
In 1966 Igor, Sciavolino’s only son, was born, nowadays he’s a well known musician. Thanks to the economic security Sciavolino reached from teaching at the Arts College from 1968 he was able to dedicate himself fully, body and soul, to his works using different materials such as wood, marble, bronze, clay, plexiglass, gold, and silver. All of his works were connected by a common thread: the interest for man and his problems.
Sciavolino’s artistic expression is a reconstruction of history, of its great moments and grand conflicts be they social, existential or class in nature. His expression also deals with man lost in urban spaces, in the big “cage” that he has built around himself. In 1974 Sciavolino moved to Rivoli, to a house he loved from the moment he first set his eyes on it.
The Sixties and Seventies were marked with the creation of a series of monumental sculptures of large dimension and of great civil effort: La Questione and the series Discorso sui materiali del far scultura per interposto a Marat (Talking about the materials for making sculptures through the intervention of Marat) defined as «a seminal sculpture about history and civil commitments in Italy» (Micieli). La Questione is a massive and charming work made of bronze. The work portrays intellectuals, man of power, ideologists and artists (from Marx to Pasolini, from Agnelli to Mao, from Gramsci to Guttuso) sitting around a long table. This artistic work was inspired by the never solved questione meridionale, an ongoing debate between spiritual tension and material necessity. During these years he frequently met the philosopher Louis Althusser, who sealed his admiration for La Questione with his suggestive thought: «Pour provoquer l’immobile à sa vérité: le mouvement qui change tout». To this day la “questione meridionale” is far from resolved. Historically, it dealt particularly with the difference between the north and south areas of Italy. Today “la questione meridionale” deals with the disparity between the rich and the poor of society all over the world. And creates episodes more or less marked by violence, racism, intolerance, but more so by misery and suffering. And so the overpowering nature of Sciavolino’s sculpture created around the 1970 still remains meaningful and inspiring in the Twenty-first century.

«La questione meridionale - the artist says - is also a typolgy, a monument, but this term has a different meaning respect the sense that it was expressed during the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century, then a monument was particularly considered to be as an exaltation of a fact, of an idea as a “contemplative rethoric”. But opposite to this concept there’s another possibility, a monument interpreted not only as an act of contemplation, but as an intermediary which creates a dialogue, a conversation. My personal “questione meridionale” with its figures is like an invitation. Everybody can turn around the table, take a seat on the empty chair and continue the ideal conversation which the represented figures suggest».

The conversations with Althusser about the revolutionary utopia and the relationship between Pierre Klossowski a charming and evocative figure as a writer and painter were for Sciavolino a moment of great inspiration. The inspiration led him on a journey through water, blood, wood, metal, body and the ashes of the illusions of the Seventies between Che Guevara and Pasolini. Thus the series Discorso sui materiali del far scultura per interposto a Marat (Talking about the materials for making sculptures through the intervention of Marat) came into being.
We can evidently say that Sciavolino’s artistic creations have ideally followed us in these last fifty years of our history dealing with social matters, as well as the terrible Years of Lead. Those years in the Seventies, which are frequently portrayed in his sculptures, have deeply etched an important part of history in the Twentieth Century. Those cruel years were filled with contradictions, their violence shown through his sculptural work. They were all symbolically connected together with a unique title But cruel are the times.
The art pieces created throughout these years reflect the ambiguity of a tragic swing. His “sets” amazed and denounced the violence which was about to hit reality in everyday life, with terrorism and the threat of Br. “The gun” appeared in many of his works, not as a toy but as an instrument of death. A declaration of this period.
Historical and private memory: Enzo becomes impassioned when he remembers driving around in his economy car above Velate to meet Renato Guttuso. He is touched when he remembers Carlo Levi’s sweetness and the fondness which the writer and painter showed him by sketching him, beneath the olive trees, above Alassio. He becomes sad when he remembers Pasolini’s tragic death which happened while Sciavolino was about to complete the modelling of his piece collocated as a central axis in La questione. His sudden death also ended common projects.
Historical and private memory: two moments of Sciavolino’s life and sculptures from the series Il tempo e la memoria o della perdita dell’infanzia (The time and memory or the loss of childhood) seem to underline the disillusion of growing up, when fables leave their place to the disillusion of reality. But in this disenchanted and complete realism, the artist cultivates a dream: to represent what it is not plastic: air, light, water the unbearable lightness of being.
In 1997 an anthology which was composed of 40 sculptures and 40 pictures by Elsa Mezzano edited by Mario Serenellini raised great interest. Corpi aperti-Scultura andata e ritorno (Open body-round trip Sculpture) was exhibited at the Malgrà Castle in Rivarolo Canavese in Turin.
In the same year, the monograph SCIAVOLINO SCULTORE quarant’anni di lucida passione, (SCIAVOLINO SCULPTOR: fourty years of lucid passion) was published and edited by Nicola Micieli, with a preface by Tahar Ben Jelloun, Bandecchi & Vivaldi Editor, Pontedera. As a preface to the monograph the writer Tahar Ben Jelloun, Enzo’s close friend, highlights the poetic similitude that joins himself to the artist. Furthermore he states that Enzo’s artistic expression in his sculptures over the last years have achieved a complete lightness as a result of his great mastery. In 1998 and 1999 Enzo created two sculptures of large dimensions: Marea (Tide) made of marble and bronze, which is situated in the Civic Park of Contemporary Sculptures in Ostellato, Ferrara, and Canneto (Cane field), a monument to the territory made of bronze for the industrial area in Sipro S.Giovanni in Ostellato.
In 1999 the city of Rivoli dedicated an anthology to Enzo, edited by Alfonso Panzetta Enzo Sciavolino/Dall’impegno alla poesia con assoluta coerenza (Enzo Sciavolino/From the engagement to poetry with absolute coherence). The anthology includes 50 works created between 1960 and 1998. Countless visitors are fascinated by the magic and troubling forms which reveal dreams, enchantments, hopes and disillusions: journeys into the mind and heart of an artist who always knows how to amaze, create curiosity and talk while offering pieces of reality and the fantastic through different materials, brightened by a 360° creativity. Rivoli is a city that loves Enzo Sciavolino very much, and it is not a coincidence that his sculptures have been exhibited close to the “cieli” (skies) by Antonio Carena, the prestigious new exhibition centre of Casa del Conte Verde, a medieval heritage of the historical heart of the city.
From 1998 to 2000 Enzo created Nel cerchio della mia vita (In the circle of my life), a work of six by four meters on white marble, and Bardiglio Nuvolato Marble from the Michelangelo quarries for the city of Collegno situated in Piazzale della Memoria.
Between 2002 and 2004, Enzo worked on the monumental fountain, seven meters high made in marble and bronze, L’albero della pace, (The Tree of peace) is situated at Piazza Martiri della Libertà in the city of Rivoli. The fountain represents life rising from water. What ignites fantasy and the imagination is the big and leafy tree made in bronze which welcomes doves to lean on its branches. On the base four children hold their hands as a symbolic peace ring. The fountain portrays a message of hope that has already become part of the city.In 2008 The Piedmont Region has organized an anthological exhibition to him at the Cavallerizza Reale in Turin entitled Enzo Sciavolino, 50 years of sculpture, Works 1957-2007 curated by Nicola Micieli.
In the last years, Sciavolino’s interests have taken different directions: from searching memory, to reaching his own dreams, not in a nostalgic sense, but in the proustian sense, in the unbearable need to catch the lightness of being. It may also be that Enzo’s rebelliousness has been placated; it may be that the birth of his nieces have given him a sense of continuity; it may also be that his return to Sicily, to his small village Valledolmo, previously so feared and then so strongly desired, has alleviated old grudges.
Today Sciavolino’s works have achieved a new struggling poetry which is reflected through his sculptures and represents the innocence of childhood games, the sweetness of a child swinging, or the enchanted isle which appears to rise into a resounding sea, where the waves, in their quiet and fair movement, prompt light musical paths.