Arte Natura: a territory as a laboratory

Since 1994 Italian and foreign artists have been invited to live in the valley and leave a work behind. Not in a gallery: in the landscape.

The story

From Land Art

Land Art is an artistic movement born at the end of the 1960s — between 1967 and 1969, to be precise — in America, and it spread quickly through the rest of the world. It matters because its exponents chose to make art outside the galleries, making the landscape the subject, and also the physical material, of works on a monumental scale. What they used were raw materials found in nature: sand, earth, water, shrubs, tree trunks, stones.

The association

In this area, in the 1990s, thanks to the stubbornness of a great local artist — Sebastiano De Laurentiis, born at Roccascalegna and deeply in love with his own land — the cultural association “Arte Natura” was set up. The aim was to create an artistic laboratory engaged with the landscape and the beauty of nature, encouraging artists to visit the places and to make works tied to the natural setting, so as to develop a new form of cultural tourism.

On 19 September 1994, in Lanciano, the association “Comunicazione Arte Natura” was founded, with its seat at Roccascalegna; its purpose was “cultural and artistic production and growth, understood as the rebuilding of collective relationships of communication and commitment between different individual paths, between social groups, villages and valleys of the Sangro-Aventino area”. The founders were Tino Bellisario, Giuseppe Borea, Candido Calabrese, Albino and Costanza Cavaliere, Maria D'Amico, Silvio D'Arcangelo, Sebastiano De Laurentiis, Piera De Menna, Leo Di Loreto, Maria Elisa Salvatore and Carmine Simone.

The biennials

It was then that the first “Arte Natura” biennial appeared, called “Campagna d'artisti, un territorio come laboratorio”. Taking part were Massimo Barzagli, Salvatore Brancato, Antonio Sebastiano De Laurentiis, Tamara Grcic and Costas Varotsos. In 1996 the artists were invited to stay in the area to get to know the places, the history and the traditions of the communities, so as to create the synergy between art and territory on which the biennial rests. In 1997 they began to put forward projects and sketches, carried out the following year together with several solo exhibitions held in the castles that stud the area.

Taking part in the second biennial were Marisa Albanese, Nicola Carrino, Sebastiano De Laurentiis and Giuliano Giuliani. In 2000 the exhibitions opened: Marisa Albanese at the ducal palace of Pizzoferrato, Nicola Carrino at the castle of Roccascalegna, Sebastiano De Laurentiis at Casoli, Giuliano Giuliani at Torricella Peligna.

The works that were made

• “Sasso” (Stone), 2000, aluminium, at Pizzoferrato, by Marisa Albanese;
• “Ceramica” (Ceramic), ceramic tiles at Archi, by Massimo Barzagli;
• “I giorni e il melograno” (The Days and the Pomegranate), 1996-1997, at Roccascalegna, an installation by Salvatore Brancato;
• “Costruttivo Fara San Martino”, 2000, corten steel, by Nicola Carrino (the work was later removed);
• “La collina degli alberi morti” (The Hill of Dead Trees), trunks found in the gravel workings, Serranella nature reserve, Altino, by Sebastiano De Laurentiis;
• “La Biscia” (The Water Snake), Carrara marble, Serranella nature reserve, Altino, by Nunzio Di Stefano;
• “La Parabola” (The Parable), travertine slab, Torricella Peligna, by Giuliano Giuliani;
• “Orizzonti” (Horizons), glass, on the Morgia of Gessopalena, by Costas Varotsos;
• “Le bocche di Tamara” (Tamara's Mouths), stone and wood, at Montenerodomo, by Tamara Grcic.