Girolamo Ciulla, the artist of travertine and goddesses, has died. Sicilian, he had chosen Pietrasanta. He will be buried in the cemetery where Botero and Mitoraj rest

A great artist has passed away, Girolamo Ciulla. With its goddesses Ceres, with its gentle crocodiles, with the temples, the black donkeys, the owls, the solitary sheep, Saint George without the dragon but with two wings. He was a protagonist of the cultural life of Pietrasanta where he had become an honorary citizen. Painter and sculptor, an artistic and human talent. He was 70 years old.

Sicilian of birth, had moved from Caltanissetta to live and work at Pietrasanta, in Tuscany, in the mid-eighties without ever leaving its roots. Which you found in the travertine chosen for his sculptures, in the mythological fascinations of the figures that emerged from the stone which in his hands was always a living thing. Friend of all the greats who passed through Pietrasanta, from Botero a Mitorajyet Ciulla was like a partly unexplored island, you would meet him walking alone in his elsewhere in that off-season Pietrasanta that he loved.

He said about him Vittorio Sgarbi inaugurating an exhibition years ago at the Etra-Marcello Tommasi studio in via della Pergola in Florence: “Ciulla is an interpreter of Donatello” and again: “The myth and legends of the Greek Ciulla are not the stories we know, but the dream of those stories that his imagination transforms into new images and stories. Ciulla does not illustrate, but creates myths in her image and likeness.” In his sculptures he subtracted evil, the shadows, had the ability to make you enter a beautiful, poetic world, made of harmony and shapes where there were no fences or passports or borders because the language was the universal one of art. Just look at Pietrasanta, one of his last works, The water of Aphrodite, a monumental travertine fountain that has become a tourist destination, a social point and has become part of the Pietrasanta International Sculpture Park. “We had been in contact with his family for a few days – said the mayor Alberto Stefano Giovannetti – because the Maestro’s condition had worsened. Always available, approachable and generous, our acquaintance dates back a long time but the most beautiful moment I remember with him was when I called him to the Town Hall and told him to work on that sculpture-fountain that had been in existence for more than twenty years. had in mind and which, in June a year ago, we inaugurated together in Piazza Statuto. The Water of Aphrodite has been a great gift to our community.” Giovannetti has already given his consent to the family’s request to bury the Maestro’s remains in the space reserved for the illustrious citizens of Pietrasanta, inside the urban cemetery, where, among others, the artists Fernando Botero and Igor Mitoraj also rest.

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The carreer

Girolamo Ciulla he has exhibited from London to Paris, from Prague to Seoul. He participated in the 2011 Venice Biennial. He created monumental works for numerous squares in Italy from Caltanissetta to Bologna and abroad his sculptures are preserved in various museums. Among these the Omero Museum, Ancona; Museum, Observatory of contemporary art in Sicily, Bagheria, Palermo; Oya Museum, Utsonomiya, Japan; Contemporary Art Gallery of the Ragghianti Foundation, Lucca. There are also many exhibitions in Italy and in Versilia in particular: in 2013, the exhibition “Myth as a drawing of matter” at Palazzo Panichi and in 2017 the “Artist and other animals”; in 2006 the patinated bronze work “The crocodile goes to the mountains” which was placed in the public space of via Asmara, in Marina di Pietrasanta.

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The illness

Time ago he was sick and he died within the walls of Pietrasanta assisted by his family, his wife Liliana and daughter Agnese. But as long as his health conditions allowed him, he worked in his studio, among the artisans in the laboratories, trying to counteract the advance of the disease as best he could: without weapons like his Ceres, like his Aphrodite, sailing with thoughts between the majestic temples and the ruins that always surround us.