Eppure la fiamma del giorno resiste alta, sui monti dove le ultime nubi riaccendono cielo e speranza
Aron Demetz. Homage to Antonio Manfredi, 2015
Aron Demetz (Sterzing/Vipiteno, 1972) lives and works in Wolkenstein in Gröden/Selva di Val Gardena. Born into a Ladin family of woodcarvers, he received his early training from 1986 to 1993 at the Kunstinstitut art school in Wolkenstein, the cradle of this old tradition, before studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Nuremberg. In his works, Demetz shows outstanding technical skill and uses an experimental approach to question the human figure and its artistic representation. He uses the traditional woodcarving craft and reinterprets it by adding materials like resin, burnt parts and metal to his wooden sculptures.
His tribute to the poet and artist Antonio Manfredi (Viareggio, 1912 – Meran/Merano, 2001) was inspired by a verse taken from Manfredi’s illustrated volume of poems Annamaria (1961), which refers to the town of Meran where the poet settled at the age of 27. The sculpture with its golden dome alludes to the sky in the verse and seems rather abstract. It stands on a block of Carrara marble, which is an allusion to the poet’s family, to the fact that his parents owned a marble quarry.