Ethnoplastic Art by Roberto Vanadia
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Description
Ethnoplastic Art by Roberto Vanadia
Property included in the Register of Intangible Heritage of Sicily (REIS)
External Link: Roberto Vanadia official site
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Technical sheet prepared by: Region of Sicily - Department of cultural heritage and Sicilian identity - CRicd: Regional center for inventory, cataloging and documentation and Sicilian regional film library
N. Prog. 101
Well: Ethnoplastic Art by Roberto Vanadia
Book: REI - Book of knowledge
Approval date: 16-11-2007
Category: Artisan technique
Province: Agrigento
Municipality: Agrigento
Local denomination: Lu mastru pastureru
Chronological News
Roberto Vanadia, artist native of Agrigento where he lives and works, is able to best represent his creativity and expressiveness in the plastic creation of environments, objects and characters representative of the Sicilian popular tradition. Famous for its miniaturizations of peasant workplaces and traditional Sicilian craft activities, these creations are the result of studies, careful research, observations that reveal the scientific mentality of the ethnographer.
In 1996 he began the collaboration relationship with the International Center of Ethnhistory of Palermo and the Institute of Anthropological Sciences of the University of Palermo and on behalf of Prof. Aurelio Rigoli, founder of the chair of Ethnhistory, he exhibited as part of the Ethnostory of Sicily exhibition some of his most expressive works.
Since 1999 the International Center of Ethnostory of Palermo, in collaboration with the Institute of Anthropological Sciences, coordinates the exhibition projects of the works of Roberto Vanadia, taking care of the scientific direction.
In 2001 he presented a large nativity scene installation in the Upper Basilica of San Francesco in Assisi. The exhibitions and his appearances at major national and international events follow one another without stopping. In 2005 he was called to represent Sicilian crib art as part of the exhibition "The Nativity. The Italian Christmas tradition”Which took place in 2005 in Moscow, in the Museum of the Cathedral of the“ Christ the Savior ”and in 2006, in the Russian Ethnographic Museum in St. Petersburg.
The exhibitions held in Moscow and St. Petersburg, in Berlin and Wolfsburg, in contexts of very high cultural value, have been fundamental stages for his success with the public and critics and his art has acquired an international dimension.
In 2011 the Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church of Moscow asked Vanadia to represent the "Mystery of the Incarnation"As part of the exhibition of the Exhibition"The Mystery of the Nativity"Held in Moscow in the Museum of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior: the result is a work conceived as a three-dimensional and landscape transposition ofIcon Russian Orthodox Church offering a synthesis of the themes and meanings of Christmas.
Function: Ethnoplast
Description
Roberto Vanadia is an ethnoplastic artist included in the Register of Sicilian Intangible Heritage since 2007 as the holder of the knowledge and skills necessary for the production of "plastic ethnographic documents" to be protected and safeguarded as essential elements of Sicilian cultural identity.
The evocative and documentary value of Roberto Vanadia's "artistic doing" has motivated the International Center of Ethnostory to present its "plastic ethno-historical documents" in prestigious exhibition contexts such as the exhibition "Giovanni Verga, a library to listen to”Promoted by the Ministry for Cultural Heritage, held in Rome on the occasion of the Week of Cultural Heritage of the year 1999.
Roberto Vanadia's art originates from the illustrious shepherd Sicilians, or decorative arts artists specialized in the creation of "shepherds" and monumental crib works. In Sicily there is an important tradition of this craft since the 600s, documented for example by the works of the famous Giovanni Matera, Mastru pasturer of Trapani, a trend still present today in the Sicilian artistic panorama.
The knowledge of Roberto Vanadia favors to bring back in eye the great craft of "small reproduction", with the inclusion of shades and chiaroscuro typical of a model of realism. His art is not an activity of nostalgic reconstruction of a time now past, but an expedient to translate into matter the specificity of the relationship between nature and culture that binds man to the territory. Vanadia knows how to instill in his work an innovative artistic code with faithful reconstructions of uses, ways of life, behaviors, tools and tools of the island's popular world of the nineteenth century, ensuring a documentary function of great interest and providing information that is sometimes not available.
Themes addressed in his “ethno-plastic” works are the Nativity, focus main of cribs, where Vanadia articulates the human story of the Community marked by rites and cults and crafts, which offer the opportunity to revive the traditional work activities linked to the cycles of wheat, oil and wine. Each architectural reconstruction of the miniatures is also authentic from the point of view of the materials used (tiles, masonry, balustrades, ceramics, work tools).
Catalog Sheet
REFERENCES
Of Christmas, Maria Concetta. 1991. Decorative arts in the Pepoli Museum of Trapani, in Vincenzo Abbate, The Pepoli Regional Museum of Trapani, Palermo: Novecento, pp. 60-63.
Precopi Lombardo, Annamaria. 2003. Trapanese sculptors "of every material in small and large" in the artistic-artisan dynamics between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuriesin Precious materials from the land and the sea, catalog of the exhibition edited by Maria Concetta Di Natale, Palermo: University of Studies, Department of Design, Faculty of Architecture, Faculty of Literature and Philosophy, p. 84.
Precopi Lombardo, Annamaria and Pietro Messana. (edited by). 2011. Wood, canvas &…: the multi-material sculpture of Trapani between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries. Erice: Meeting point.
Bird, Antoninus. 1979. The popular nativity scene in Sicily, Palermo: SF Flaccovio.
Vanadia, Robert. 1990. A nativity scene. Agrigento: Giulio Pastore Study Center.
Sitography
Footnotes
In scientific collaboration with the International Center of Ethnostoria, for example, one of his most representative works was born, a monumental work divided into seven scenes and dedicated to the extraction of sulfur. This ethnoplastic representation, which documents the sad human story of the sulfur miners of Sicily, is now exhibited at the Anthropological Museum "Civic Ethno-historical collection" Zolfare and Zolfatari "of the Municipality of Montedoro.
Card Author: Chiara Dell'Utri
Card insertion on Heritage: Ignazio Caloggero
Information contributions: Web, Region of Sicily
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