Charming Sardinia | Pinuccio Sciola and the voice of stones

There is a proverb saying that unemotional hearts are made of stone, and there is another that associates stone to the attitude of stubborn people.

Also, there are those who “throw the stone and then hide the end” in the act of avoiding responsibilities.

Finally, and more poetically, there is someone who knows stones like no one did, and found a way to make them sing just using one finger.

This magic is symbolic of the art of Pinuccio Sciola, who is both sculptor, poet and farmer.

The perfect place to meet with the artist is San Sperate, a small and colorful village few kilometers far from Cagliari. This is the place of peaches and white orange blossoms, as well as “the village of murals”, as it is widely known since the early Seventies. This is because external walls of houses and streets in town reveal more than 250 art pieces painted by artists from all over the world.

San Sperate is symbolic of the strong relationship between Sciola and the land. Land of Sardinia, land due to plough and to seed. Land to work on using your hands. Land to host houses and our lives. Land to keep record of time through the stones. It is 1996 when Sciola for the first time experiments with the  techniques of stone engraving. 
 

Limestone or basaltic rocks delicately carved until the deep heart: a slow process of parallel and lucid cuts likely to sing if slightly touched in the right way.

«Dear San Francesco, when you used to talk to the water, to the flowers and even to the stars, the stone used to listen to you in silence. Now, thanks to both the intuition of an artist and the technology, stone will make you listen its voice and sounds». Pinuccio Sciola