Russia on Bruno Liberatore
“As of August 10th this year, we will have the chance to feel closer to Italy, for that is the day the exhibition Bruno Liberatore: Sculpture and Drawings opens at the Hermitage Museum. On show at this interesting exhibition will be works by one of contemporary Italy’s most active and frequently exhibited sculptors. Even in his earliest works, we can see this artist’s marked individuality and his tendency to devise completely new forms and volumes unrelated to figurative plastic art. Later, Liberatore turned to more complex forms, drawing inspiration from natural structures. The exhibition will show sculptures of various dimensions, ranging from the artist’s monumental compositions to his small-scale works. Completing this retrospective of his work are sketches and articles of jewellery that are distinguished by their innovation and originality”.
Informational website PeterOut.ru, St. Petersburg, 13 August 2007.
“For the first time in Russia, an exhibition is being held of works by Bruno Liberatore, professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. In his home country, Bruno is a sculptor of renown, considered to be Italy’s most original. He is an artist who has a predilection for abstract compositions evoking nature. His best works are now on show at the Winter Palace. The leitmotif running through Liberatore’s art is the exploration of the universe through the contemplation of nature.”
Informational website Vzgliad-info, 13 August 2007
“Not everyone is lucky enough to have his art displayed within these walls. The Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg is a unique location. Works to be exhibited here undergo a rigorous selection process as juxtaposing them next to those of the old masters is quite a challenge. The Italian sculptor Bruno Liberatore has been deemed worthy of such an honour. The latter creates non-figurative compositions which can typically be divided into two groups. The first consists of simple, straightforward forms modified only slightly by the artist - pyramids, cones, and closed volumes - such as can be seen in his bronzes Wall, Façade and, Island. In his later period, the artist reverts to more complex forms evoking the theme of the earth and its fecundity, its suffering and its violent character. These include Eruption in bronze and Cavity in terracotta. Visitors to the Hermitage will thus be able to follow the different phases in Liberatore’s creative evolution”.
Maxim Koncharov
Komsomolskaya Pravda, 13 August 2007..
“Since the beginning of his artistic career, Liberatore has displayed a penchant for form. In his early works, he used shapes that have been known since ancient times such as pyramids and cones. His later works are based on forms of a more complex nature”.
Sankt-Peterburgskie Vedomosti, n. 147, 10 August 2007.
“Liberatore has an utterly personal vision of the world. In his bronze and terracotta sculptures, one is struck by the meticulous way he builds up the surfaces. Quite often, the latter consist of an incrustation of small fragments resembling flower petals or the leaves of trees. Through his plastic art, the sculptor seeks to express nature’s various moods”.
Ekonomika i Vremya. St. Petersburg, n. 32, 27 August 2007.
“Liberatore says: ‘The earth is the most interesting material we have to deal with. At times, it seems to us to be suffering, at others enraged, and sometimes to be undergoing a rebirth. I seek to express these different states of nature’. Certain compositions of his in terracotta have such a natural appearance that one seems to be able to make out familiar forms in the abstract fragments of clay. For example, one of the artist’s recent works, Terrestrial Flow, bears a strong resemblance to a nose-diving bird”.
Anastasia Gordeeva Informational website RIA Novosti, St. Petersburg, 10 August 2007.
“Liberatore creates numerous non-figurative compositions which can typically be divided into two groups. The first group is based on simple, straightforward forms modified only slightly by the artist. In his later period, the artist seeks to create new forms that evoke natural structures. These forms are often linked to the theme of the earth, sometimes fertile and generous, at others tormented and violent”.
Informational website Sankt-Peterburg.ru, 9 August 2007.
“The works of Liberatore – his drawings, his silver jewellery, and his sculptures that look as if they have been made from petals – contain a profound philosophical idea.’ When I was young, I had a different view of the world’, Bruno Liberatore tells Nevskoe Vremya. ‘Everything looked radiant to me and it seemed to me that everything should be opened up to the world, to mankind. When composing my sculptures, I used prominent forms, with smooth joyful surfaces, such as my arches and gates.... With time, my vision of the world changed and around 1970, I realised that the world is sick, that it is ageing and riddled with internal problems. The petals and flakes of which my works are made, with their rough surfaces, are all signs of society’s sick- ness.’ Liberatore traces the roots of his art back to the Italian classical school, but sculpts the human body rather in rectilinear metal forms”.
Alla Ziopa
Society’s Terracotta Sickness // Nevskoe Vremya, 15 August 2007.
“Some thirty sculptures in bronze and terracotta are on show inside the General Staff building and in the courtyard of the Winter Palace. What Bruno Liberatore, a professor at Rome’s Academy of Fine Arts, creates can today be defined as very traditional, indeed conservative, sculpture. Those objects of his, which are almost abstract, albeit metaphorically evoking moun- tain landscapes or the remains of ancient organic matter, represent the pursuit of form in the most obvious, scholastic even, sense of the word. It is clear that the artist is above all else interested in the contrast between superficial and deep shadows, as well as in the way reflections play on smooth surfaces, and in the curvatures that space takes on when filled with such compound and voluminous flourishes. His more recent works modelled in clay, in which one can even see his fingerprints, display a more docile build up, visible in all those small flakes and leaves, as distinct and precise as those painted by fifteenth century artists. That Liberatore is no stranger to piquant extravagance can be seen in his jewellery: two showcases contain silver and gold rings looking like fantastic armies of chess pieces ready for battle”.
Serghei Lunin
Time out Petersburg, 28 July 2007.
“Liberatore’s jewellery pieces consist of chunky bracelets, necklaces and rings in silver and gold. They are of a design that reminds one of the scales of a large reptile or a squashed Chinese aster”.
Anastasia Gordeeva. Informational website RIA Novosti, St. Petersburg, 10 August 2007.
“For the very first time, the works of Bruno Liberatore, a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome are on show in Russia. The exhibition is being held at the Hermitage. This artist achieved recognition during the eighties as a sculptor, draughtsman, and jeweller. He creates so-called non-figurative compositions, reminiscent of trees and animals. The show provides a clear overview of his artistic production and language. It must be said that many of the artist’s admirers followed the works to Saint Petersburg. Particularly impressive are his monumental compositions which one is allowed to touch and vsitors enjoy being photographed beside or even on top of these unusual sculptures.”