I am a professional sculptress since many years, raised with my hands in clay in my childhood, learning step by step art techniques also from the artistic experience of my father, Sandro Granucci, a well-known artist in the area of Chianti, where our Art studio Atelier is located. Chianti, besides being my birthplace, is an integral part of my artistic DNA, in fact I have developed over the years of academic studies and artistic work a special interest in bronze and terracotta, both typical materials of this area, one of the most poetic places in Tuscany.
My art works find inspiration throughout all time periods reaching from the Art of Etruscan Bronze Tuscan, to the elegance and beauty of Florentine Renaissance Art to aspects of the Minimalism of Contemporary Art.
Viola Granucci
“Male and Female Dualistic Principles ANIMA-ANIMUS”
The research for the balance between the male and female dualistic principles is one of the most important base of my art concept that can be found in almost every of my scultpures.
My figures in bronze are representing on the one hand the most concrete sense of balance and harmony in the relationship between man and woman but on the other hand the masculine and feminine principles reflect a second deeper meaning in which each individual embodies the dual masculine and feminine nature called with the name of the two archetypes of the unconscious of an individual, “ANIMA” the female component in men and “ANIMUS” the male component in women. (This concept was an insight of the Swiss philosopher and psychologist Carl Gustav Jung, a disciple of Sigmund Freud). (The art critic Stefano Masi talks about this in depth, in an article about my works published in my art catalogue.)
My figures interact with each other in a close relationship with the sorrounding setting that I represent with geometric shapes, white terracotta, essential, minimal , elegant and rich in symbolic connotations, among these the main ones are definitely the circles and scales.
“The CIRCLE”
I have developed many works based on circles with figures standing in their center, the most representative are certainly : “THE KISS“, “EQUILIBRIUM“, “THE ACROBAT” and “VITRUVIAN SUN COUPLE“.
The circle, as a symbol and form, blends perfectly with the concept of balance of the male and female principle as it represents the union and link of these two polarities.
There is a clear reference, in all these works, to Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, the Florentine genius of the renaissance, the man at the center of the circle symbolizes the man at the center of the universe able to dominate the surrounding reality, finding the perfect balance between rational and irrational. Surely “THE KISS” and “VITRUVIAN SUN COUPLE” are the sculptures where this Leonardian inspiration is most expressed, in the first work the figures, with the same posture of the Vitruvian Man, are enveloped by passion and eros concentrated in the moment of the kiss, in the second opera the figures are arranged more rigorously as guardians of the laws of the universe and the sun, they are surrounded by the planets of the solar system, arranged in order according to their trajectories around the sun.
“THE ACROBAT” is the circus that defies the laws of gravity and nature, and in this case transforms the circle into an oval, free to move in various positions, under its energy drive and strength, symbolizes man’s grip on power over the universe.
“EQUILIBRIUM” the two figures remain suspended inside the circle thanks to the force of the thrusts and counter-pulls of the legs, as in a game of attraction and repulsion of the two opposite poles that is also found in electricity, produced in fact by the attraction and from the repulsion of the two male positive with the female negative polarities . I also reproduced this work in a large size, 2 meters, in polychrome iron, for a permanent installation in an art park in the Chianti area.
In other works my figures are located above the circle, placing themselves in a more sumptuous and dominant position: as in “PULL THE ROPE I” and “PULL THE ROPE II” , where the masculine and the feminine are active in a game of opposite and equal tensions, held together by a rope. The circle is opened by a fragment breaking its closed circular pattern and opening its inner void with that of the outside world to symbolize an openness towards something larger.
In “FLOATING BALANCE” the male and female figures still play on the tension of opposite but identical forces maintaining themselves in a perfect symmetrical balance. The circle is divided into two parts which oscillating at the touch.
In “THE COUPLE GAME” the figures are seated on opposite sides of a fragment of circle, guardians of a sphere, wrapped by a sense of sacredness that can be found in a similar way to certain Etruscan bronze statuettes.
“CONVERSATIONS” and “EMBRACE” the circle is no longer the only predominant element but is inserted within a square or rectangular shape. I always take back from the Vitruvian Man the geometry of the circle within the square. The circle represents spirituality and the sky, the square the Earth and man. The circle in the square symbolizes man’s efforts to transfolate his earthly identity into the more divine one. A discourtive element of these two works are the net vertical openings in the figures, creating an empty space to symbolize the openness of one’s interiority to the outside world.
“THE STAIRS”
Among my other most representative sculptures, beyond the circles, there are the various stairs with figures committed to climb and descend depending on the route. My stairs can be simple, double, crossed or even invisible to create real imaginary paths. The staircase is used as a symbol in certain initiatory rites, as a direct bridge of communication between earth and sky, between the human and the divine, and its pegs are expressly considered as representations of the different higher states that being finds itself to travel as they become. As well as “THE DOOR” where the figures at the top of a rhododal staircase open a singular door of the sky, “VERTICAL STAIR I” and “ VERTICAL STAIR II”, the extreme unrealistic verticality of the staircase wants to express this connection as a direct bridge between earth and sky.
This concept of the search for the evolution of being of a higher identity, I express it in virtually all my scales. in “SEATED KING” the crowned figure is sitting on top of the staircase, in a state of contemplation and meditation of himself. “WHITE STAIR” the figure, in its full evolutionary process, is busy climbing the ladder while balancing a large egg on his head (this last work was created in collaboration with my father).
In many of my stairs the figures find themselves climbing and descending the pegs, as in “UPSIDE DOWN STAIR” where the ascent symbolizes an evolutionary upper stage of itself while descending a questioning of one’s being.
“NEVERENDING STAIR” , here the figures are destined not to meet, rise and descend the ladder as in an unstoppable and infinite closed cyclical sequence, to represent the perpetual and spasmodic search of the being of its own identity and its evolution throughout his becoming.
“UPSIDE DOWN LOVE” the staircase is always infinite, enclosed within a circle, where the figures continue to rise and descend the endless staircase living as on parallel planes, but here the feminine and the masculine meet in the center of the circle with the focal point on the their hands to converge the universal energies and the conception of an indissoluble union. A similar concept is developed in the work “MEETING POINT” where the female figure, who holds a child, and the male one meet on two stairs that cross as a symbol of union. The same female figure holding a child I represented her in another work “WAVE AFTER WAVE” where the ascent on the ladder transforms and becomes the ascent on sinuous sea waves.
Three other works are united by an even more surreal representation, that of the invisible stairs, that is, on a squared shapes, as if it were a wall segment, the negative space of the scale is projected and formed within it, as in “INVISIBLE STAIR” and “INVISIBLE STAIRS ” where the solitary figure or the two figures rise and fall as if there really were a ladder under their feet.
In “HALF MAN” the negativity and emptiness formed by the invisible scale involves the figures itself who finds himself divided in two, crating a dual meaning of splitting the identity of the being and on openness of himself to the outside.
“EVOLUTIONS AND SEQUENCES”
The concept of the evolution of being in a higher identity I developed in other works, which I call Evolutions and Sequences, where the same character I represent him several times in a timeline in his various stages of evolutionary trasformation. I started working on tis theme already years ago with works such as “I AM I” a scultpure that won a sculpture award at the Biennale of Gubbio, Perugiam in 2008. Here the figure is repeated identiacl several times but only one of them becomes awate of itself and his inner diversity is projected onto its own life-talking shadow. “SHADOWS OF THE EVENING” the figure is likely to be larger to describe each state of inner evolution, and the projection of one’s shadow from a temporal sense while the small vertica scale is a reference to this ascent upwards.
More recent works are “EVOLUTION SEQUENCE” where the concept of human evolution is much more obvious. In this sequence, the figure evolves into a higher phase where on its path of growth rediscovers its original state represented by the small fish, symbol of its unconscious and its more instinctive nature, and gradually transforms itself into a half fish and half man, in search of his evolutionary freedom.
In “REFLECTION IN THE WATER“, there is no sequence but you find the same figure with the fish, where observing the surface of the water, represented by a wave, sees its marine reflection with its head transformed into a fish. The philosopher and psychologist Jung connected water and fish to the inner world of man for excellence. The relationship between man and water is a symbol of the ego and its individual journey of evolution.
“HEART SEQUENCE” is my last sequence dedicated always to the concept of the evolution of man, where the two protagonists are the head and the heart. Man is a being composed of reason and feeling, that is, a head, the source of thought and reason and a heart hotbed of feeling and passions. This dualism of feeling and reason are not always in balance, very often one is stronger on the other. In my sequence, the sitting man is a thinking being where the mind has dominion, the small heart resting on his knees is already a first sign of feeling that becomes stronger progressively where first the man observes the heart then decides to put it at the end of his hand, his outstretched arms act as a scale to measure the weight of rationality and feeling. Finally, man’s evolutionary choice to almost reset his rationality and give the heart the dominion of himself becoming a major part of his body.
The concept of evolution of being I also interpret it with a series of works inspired by the interaction of male and female figures with mazes: among them “LABIRYNTH I“, “LABIRYNTH II“, “MULTIDIMENSIONAL LABIRYNTH“, to represent the challenge and the complexity of being, within one’s own existence, towards a necessary research both of himself but also of the other, the opposite polarity, for its own indispensable evolutionary process.