One of the important working sculpture botteghe of the Pietrasanta–Querceta area.
Studio di Scultura d’Arte Giorgio Angeli is one of the important working sculpture botteghe of the Pietrasanta–Querceta area. Giorgio Angeli opened the workshop in the early 1970s, after beginning as a scalpellino, and the studio developed around the traditional relationship between an artist and the highly skilled artisan who understands how to translate an artistic idea into stone. One account of Angeli’s career records Isamu Noguchi as the first artist welcomed into the workshop, followed over the years by internationally recognized sculptors including Kan Yasuda, Giò Pomodoro, Pietro Cascella and Eva Sørensen.
The relationship with Kan Yasuda is particularly significant. Yasuda began working with Giorgio Angeli in the 1970s, and sources documenting his career state that the majority of his Apuan-marble sculptures have been produced at Angeli’s Querceta workshop since 1974. Their collaboration became a decades-long partnership based on the technical knowledge and craftsmanship of the studio.
The workshop combines the older knowledge of marble carving with contemporary production technology. An artist can begin with a model that is enlarged or translated into stone, with digital scanning and mechanical or robotic roughing used when appropriate, followed by the more sensitive stages of shaping, checking, refining and finishing by experienced stone workers. The studio’s continuing interest in robotics and 3D technology has also been documented in its training of younger workers.
For the Sculptors Lexicon, Giorgio Angeli is especially important because this workshop illustrates the traditional artist–artisan relationship of the Italian bottega. The artisan is not simply an anonymous fabricator. Deep knowledge of marble, tools, enlargement, structural limits and finishing becomes part of the process through which the artist’s conception is realized in stone.
Studio Directory
Studio Information
- Studio type
- Bottega
- Location
- Querceta, Seravezza, Lucca (LU) | Tuscany | Italia, Italy
- Address
- Via Madonnina 256/B2
- Website
- http://www.giorgioangeli.com
- info@giorgioangeli.com
- Telephone
- +39 0584 769738
- Visiting notes
-
Studio Giorgio Angeli is an active professional sculpture workshop, rather than a tourist attraction, so artists should contact the studio before visiting. Public business information currently lists weekday working hours of approximately 8:30 AM–6:30 PM, Monday through Friday, but an appointment should be confirmed directly with the workshop.
For a sculptor, this is an especially worthwhile bottega because of its long history of working directly with artists. The studio offers an opportunity to understand how an artist’s model becomes a major work in marble and how contemporary scanning and roughing technology can coexist with traditional stone knowledge and hand finishing.
Its decades-long collaboration with Kan Yasuda is perhaps the clearest example: rather than a one-time fabrication job, the relationship developed into sustained cooperation between sculptor and bottega. That continuity is one of the defining characteristics of the Pietrasanta tradition and makes Studio Giorgio Angeli particularly relevant to artists interested in having work translated into marble.