“That grounds.” This is the first thought that goes through the visitor’s mind as she approaches the work area of the Scuola di Scultura di Peccia in Ticino. There, various knocking noises come together to create a rustic concert: participants in the “Stone Carving for Beginners” course work on their sculptures with pointed chisels and steel hammers. On the horizon you can see the Pizzo Castello and the Punta della Rossa. Both peaks are more than 2800 meters high, and with a little imagination, their peaks form a large M – like marble.
The area is rich in a high quality marble type, the Peccia marble. It is named after the historic village of Peccia, which is located in a small side valley of the Lavizzara valley, which in turn branches off from the Maggia valley. At the foot of these mountains, a few kilometers northwest of the stone carving school, the company Cristallina AG has been quarrying the white Peccia marble since 1946. The stone is pressure-resistant, but at the same time it is easy to work with and shows different color drawings – which is one of the reasons why artists appreciate the material.
The sculpture that Tanja Urban from Zurich creates in this remote location in the mountains fits easily in the trunk of a car. The 56-year-old doesn’t want to put pressure on herself to finish her work during the course: “I can continue working at home. You need a lot of patience to work with the marble.” She takes the course on a sabbatical to reorient herself professionally: “Working with the stone is like meditation. You learn a lot about yourself,” she remarks as she examines her work. She uses chisels and steel hammers “spontaneously and intuitively”. “It will be something organically shaped, I can’t say more yet, it is developing.” In addition to her sculpture, she will also take home the experience of being able to deal with the dimension of time differently than she has mostly done in her life so far.
The range of courses also includes nude modeling and metal casting
The program of the Scuola di Scultura di Peccia is broad and suitable for amateurs who might want to create a second professional pillar, as well as for professional sculptors or art educators who want to continue their education and one of the one or two-week courses or the multi-day courses Book workshops. In 43 course weeks per year, seminars for ten to 15 participants are offered on very different focuses: Topics include head or nude modeling, various drawing techniques, experimental work with plaster, wood modeling or metal casting. There are also courses on the professional transport of heavy stone blocks and forging pointed and chisel iron, as well as seminars on the history of art or the geology of Peccia marble.
Most of the school’s stone sculptors work with Peccia marble, which comes from the back of the Maggia Valley, but you can also experiment with soapstone or alabaster.
(Photo: Scuola di Scultura)
The participants in the extra-occupational training course “stone carving and three-dimensional design” allow themselves a lot of time to find their own creative path. It lasts four years and provides specialist knowledge of the art forms of sculpture and sculpture, three-dimensional design and art history. The target group includes teachers, art educators or architects as well as art students, people who want to reorient themselves professionally, or those who practice a stone-working profession: stone sculptors, stone cutters or stone carvers. However, the historical profession of stone cutter is now considered to be as good as extinct.
The individual life situation plays an important role in the training
Most students, professionals, professional and amateur artists of various ages who retreat to the small village at an altitude of 840 meters work with Peccia marble. “But we also offer the opportunity to experiment with soapstone or alabaster,” says the art teacher and art therapist Almute Grossmann-Naef. The 48-year-old runs the school together with her husband Alex Naef. The couple attaches great importance to “individualizing lessons”. Its concept is described in the book “Marmor macht Schule” published by him: The participants should be looked after personally, which also means that their own life situation should play a role in the design process and in communication. In addition, it is very important for the two who work as lecturers to train the perception, the sensual knowledge of the artists.
Peccia is a place of silence with an international atmosphere. “We work here with 25 teachers from different countries,” says Großmann-Naef. In one of the studios, a model with a Rubens figure is posing in the middle of the room. The lecturer of the life drawing course gives the participants tips for their sketches in Italian. You can usually hear many languages on the site of the sculpture school, including Russian and Japanese. Due to the pandemic, however, some nations were missing this season.
In the meantime, 400 people interested in art take part in further training in Peccia every year. In 1987 the Swiss Alex Naef founded the Scuola di Scultura – since then the range of open courses has grown steadily. The sculptor and art teacher studied at various art schools, including in Ottersberg in Bremen, where he also met Almute Großmann-Naef, who came from Germany, for the first time. His goal was not to become a sculptor, but to work pedagogically in the artistic field. “I didn’t want to touch any stones,” recalls the 67-year-old, who comes from a family of sculptors. That didn’t work. The marble attracts him magically, after the conversation he will immediately dedicate himself to a few large stone blocks on the site. His sculptor friend Rolf Flachsmann once lured Naef to the back of the Maggia Valley, where Flachsmann founded a forerunner of the Scuola.
It is important for the art educator to look after groups of school children who come to Peccia themselves and to teach them how to make artistic work with marble more enjoyable. This also has something to do with the key experience of the friend, who has since passed away, which ultimately led to the founding of the stone carving school. “Back then, Flachsmann saw a group of students in Peccia beating stones listlessly and without feeling for the material. Then he thought to himself: It can’t work that way! The lessons have to be organized differently.” When Naef talks about it, his voice sounds emotional, and you can feel that it is a matter close to his heart to introduce children and young people to the art of sculpture.
The new stone carving center is intended to stimulate international cultural dialogue
When he enters the futuristic exhibition and event building of the new Centro Internazionale di Scultura (CIS) at the entrance to Peccia, he still rubs his eyes sometimes. “From the barracks, with which the history of the school began, to the international stone carving center, we would never have dreamed of that back then,” says Naef. More than ten years ago, he and his wife began to get involved in this project, which they realized through a foundation and with the support of numerous private and public donors. In May the CIS was inaugurated with a show designed with 40 tons of Peccia marble. Even very large and heavy blocks of stone can be moved around the site with the help of a lifting crane that can withstand a weight of up to 20 tons.
The CIS also has five artist studios with panoramic views. From now on, five “Artists in Residence” from all over the world will work there for six months each year. “This year we received 132 applications from 34 countries,” reports Almute Großmann-Naef. One of this year’s guest artists is the Japanese Shinroku Shimokawa, who convinced the jury with a “river project”. “An installation with stones from the Maggia, in which I compare how the river shapes the stones and what the artist, i.e. myself, makes of them”, explains the 41-year-old, who comes from Tokyo and lives in Stuttgart. Shimokawa finds the exchange with the other artists in residence, the students and lecturers of the Scuola di Scultura, but also with visitors about his work “very valuable” because it also inspires him to new art projects. This is exactly what the initiators and sponsors of the CIS are interested in: to inspire the international dialogue about art and sculpture.
You can take courses at the Scuola di Scultura visit in Peccia from April to October. The website provides detailed information about the seminars and the in-service training “stone carving and three-dimensional design”, which costs around 15,000 Swiss francs. The courses for 2022 are already available there. The participants live in apartments on the premises or in Ticino houses in the village of Peccia. On the portal of the Centro Internazionale di Scultura you can also find out more about its artist-in-residence program.