Together with the Urban District of Commerce we met Marino Angelo Rossi, a wood carver from Bergamo. Here is his story:
In lower via Pignolo, a stone’s throw from Piazzetta Santo Spirito, a small shop full of wonders opens up.
At the entrance is a trestle, some tools of the trade, such as chisels and gouges, and the intense scent of wood.
Then paintings - some very large, others small and colourful - and sculptures, boxes, chests that fill the space with continuous charm.
All rigorously and meticulously carved by the artisan artist Marino Angelo Rossi.
Here, every day he "works by chisel", literally, and every one of his bas-reliefs come into the world.
For Marino, this work was a conquest but also an event, something unexpected, a talent that more than anything else just happened to him.
On the other hand, growing up in a family with four children and with a father who died too soon, he had to get to work early. "We had to eat!", he adds with a smile.
He remembers that during his childhood he loved to draw and that everyone asked him for drawings to take home and keep. He then delighted in assembling pieces of wood, making objects of all kinds, and even creating a real threshing machine. To him it took little, some wood, a little bit of wire and the rest was made by ingenuity.
"Of course I'm rural, but not stupid!" He stresses proudly.
It was a pastime that he nurtured with passion, but to which his work as a builder didn’t leave much room.
One day - he was 33 years old - he found a table and began to carve it. He made a portrait of Dante Alighieri, which still stands out on a wall of his small shop in the city centre.
"It's not so much where you arrive, but how you get there."
He knows this well, because in his lifetime he has done many things. He was a bricklayer, teacher, restorer, avant-garde artist (also alongside Corrado) and a wandering and passionate guitarist.
"But I was born a carver: talent comes when you are born!"
In the exhibited works, all his passions find a story: mechanics, music, literature, astronomy and poetry.
Some pieces are almost rebus to decipher or love poems: terrestrial globes with red roses in the cardinal points or roulette that talk about the game of love and its tireless presence every day of the year.
Marino carves incessantly, as if he could not help it.
"First I close my eyes and draw like a film, because I want everything I do to make sense. And I always do what I want!"
Beside him, silent and proud, is Davide, his professional musician son, who today is committed to ensuring that his father's work has the acknowledgment he deserves: "Thanks to him I was lucky enough to do what I loved and I owe it to him."
Between them, you can feel the esteem that binds them, the mutual trust and the great understanding that only shared passions can build.
Listening to them we convince ourselves even more that every talent, every look capable of beauty began from some contagion, perhaps unconscious, something that then, often, becomes just a vague memory.
Marino remembers his mother, who while the four children dined, she aloud read to them, two books in particular: The Betrothed and the Divine Comedy.
She used to say: "Remember that in life you can lose everything, but not dignity".
Today, the carved work of which Davide is most closely connected, is in fact his father’s very large bas-relief of the Divine Comedy, created many years ago and carefully kept in a secret place.
Inheritance of the heart.
Together with the Urban District of Commerce we met Marino Angelo Rossi, a wood carver from Bergamo. Here is his story:
In lower via Pignolo, a stone’s throw from Piazzetta Santo Spirito, a small shop full of wonders opens up.
At the entrance is a trestle, some tools of the trade, such as chisels and gouges, and the intense scent of wood.
Then paintings - some very large, others small and colourful - and sculptures, boxes, chests that fill the space with continuous charm.
All rigorously and meticulously carved by the artisan artist Marino Angelo Rossi.
Here, every day he "works by chisel", literally, and every one of his bas-reliefs come into the world.
For Marino, this work was a conquest but also an event, something unexpected, a talent that more than anything else just happened to him.
On the other hand, growing up in a family with four children and with a father who died too soon, he had to get to work early. "We had to eat!", he adds with a smile.
He remembers that during his childhood he loved to draw and that everyone asked him for drawings to take home and keep. He then delighted in assembling pieces of wood, making objects of all kinds, and even creating a real threshing machine. To him it took little, some wood, a little bit of wire and the rest was made by ingenuity.
"Of course I'm rural, but not stupid!" He stresses proudly.
It was a pastime that he nurtured with passion, but to which his work as a builder didn’t leave much room.
One day - he was 33 years old - he found a table and began to carve it. He made a portrait of Dante Alighieri, which still stands out on a wall of his small shop in the city centre.
"It's not so much where you arrive, but how you get there."
He knows this well, because in his lifetime he has done many things. He was a bricklayer, teacher, restorer, avant-garde artist (also alongside Corrado) and a wandering and passionate guitarist.
"But I was born a carver: talent comes when you are born!"
In the exhibited works, all his passions find a story: mechanics, music, literature, astronomy and poetry.
Some pieces are almost rebus to decipher or love poems: terrestrial globes with red roses in the cardinal points or roulette that talk about the game of love and its tireless presence every day of the year.
Marino carves incessantly, as if he could not help it.
"First I close my eyes and draw like a film, because I want everything I do to make sense. And I always do what I want!"
Beside him, silent and proud, is Davide, his professional musician son, who today is committed to ensuring that his father's work has the acknowledgment he deserves: "Thanks to him I was lucky enough to do what I loved and I owe it to him."
Between them, you can feel the esteem that binds them, the mutual trust and the great understanding that only shared passions can build.
Listening to them we convince ourselves even more that every talent, every look capable of beauty began from some contagion, perhaps unconscious, something that then, often, becomes just a vague memory.
Marino remembers his mother, who while the four children dined, she aloud read to them, two books in particular: The Betrothed and the Divine Comedy.
She used to say: "Remember that in life you can lose everything, but not dignity".
Today, the carved work of which Davide is most closely connected, is in fact his father’s very large bas-relief of the Divine Comedy, created many years ago and carefully kept in a secret place.
Inheritance of the heart.
