GIUSEPPE DEL DEBBIO ( 1937-2019)
Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, Italy. He was fascinated with the Etruscan art which has become his main inspiration. He created sculptures in bronze, marble, gesso. His works were exhibited, among others, at the famous Florentine Pleiade exhibition.

#BIOGRAPHY

The Etruscans created a culture whose traces are still an important source of Italian culture today. The works of Modigliani and Giacometti – the greatest artists of the last century – grew out of these traditions. Etruscan motifs also inspired an outstanding contemporary artist associated with the Florentine Accademia di Belle Arti: Giuseppe del Debbio.

Under a thin layer of soil, central Italy is closer than anywhere to history and mystery. These are the old cities of the Etruscans – a mysterious people that the ancient Romans tried to defeat for three centuries. According to one of the hypotheses, the Etruscans came from the area of today’s Turkey. They drew inspiration from Greece. They created a culture whose traces are the foundations of Italian culture to this day. Culture from which the artists of the 20th century drew heavily. The culture from which both Modigliani and Giacometti grew up – the greatest artists of the last century. They also inspired Giuseppe del Debbio- an outstanding contemporary artist associated with the Accademia di Belle Arti  in Florence.

The Etruscans left behind, among other things, wall paintings covering their underground “cities” – as in the necropolis in Cerveteria and Tarqinia. The slender Etruscan horses are reproduced massively today. They left sculptures – the famous sarcophagi of Etruscan couples. They also left an unsolved mystery: who were they? how did they live? Especially that their everyday life is seen through the prism of finality – what they left in the tombs hidden underground.

The fascination with the Etruscans in the case of the excellent Florentine sculptor, Giuseppe del Debbio, also translated into his work. This long-term professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence created slender bronze figures. They looked like pillars going up to the sky.

Del Debbio’s sculptures evoke the colors of nature. The shape resembles the silhouette of Tuscan cypress trees, and the color is green from the olive trees that grow on the local slopes. Giuseppe del Debbio’s drawings retain on paper the subtle sensuality of sophisticated, elongated figures. The artist’s gouaches are characterized by pastel tones and a slightly surrealistic features.

Professor Giuseppe del Debbio lived and worked in a former, meticulously restored Medici villa, set among hills and the scent of cypress trees. From the biforium on the first floor there is a view of the Lucken hills. In the light of the window stands one of the professor’s sculptures.

Here, art is also in incredible harmony with nature. The passion for creation in the heart of Tuscany stems from some wonderful continuity. Out of genuine faith in the eternity of art. From the eternal search for beauty.

The house and studio where Giuseppe del Debbio  lived and worked are like a dream. You have to climb up to the stone house with the legendary biforia. The buildings  grow straight out of the ground, among rows of cypress trees. From the windows, right next to it, you can see the 11th-century church. The parish priest is said to have been scandalized at the sight of a bronze sculpture of a stretching girl in nude standing in the sculptor’s garden. A dialogue like that of Don Camillo apparently grew out of it. The priest was later seen crossing out the lottery numbers, in a gambler’s ardor. Who is more sinful?

The artist found this place near his family home. He was born in the area of Lucca and could only live here. In accordance with the Italian principle of Campanilismo. The horizon, the corresponding places are marked by the panorama that extends from its own tower. Italian cities were filled with these towers, the sky above the cities was combed with towers climbing up like cypress trees. However, if someone (was it Stendhal? Or Goethe?) compared cypresses to prayers climbing to the sky, all these towers are above all embedded in the ground. They belong to the order of the earth, they gravitate over the Italian soil.

The Gothic soaring of the plants, the Romanesque heaviness of the building (well, maybe not always, because the cathedral of St. Martin in Lucca, the one on which the saint throws off his cloak high above the portal, is Romanesque by definition, although its vault is barely visible.

Lucca. This is a place for a sculptor. Shales to browns in the ground. Not far from here to Carrara with its marble quarries. Then Prato and Maremma. And from the highest peaks a view of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Etrusca (what a wonderful name!), one of Giuseppe and Maura’s daughters remembers in a conversation that she loved holidays here, but she also always missed the sea. It is slightly surprising, because when you talk to anyone here, you get the impression that people here don’t miss anything.

Several years ago, Giuseppe found an abandoned house. It used to belong to the estate of the Lords of Lucchi. Ruined, only stone upon stone remained. There, Giuseppe found a place for a studio. extraordinary. Studio – like a garden of sculptures. Like many great artists of the twentieth century (yes, even Picasso loved the antiquity), del Debbio’s modernity grows from an ancient root. For Giuseppe del Debbio, this is Etruscan art. He even dedicated his daughter’s name to them. And the second daughter is called Donatella. And we already know everything about Giuseppe del Debbio’s art, what is hidden in these names – Etrusca and Donatella. A personal tribute to great phenomena in art. For the lyricism of the Etruscans (Modigliani loved them too), for the sensual beauty of Donatello.

Etruscans. The greatest secret of the Italian land. The most enigmatic culture on which Roman antiquity grew. For half a millennium, traces have been excavated from the Italian soil. Walls, carved stones, bronzes, dishes. Tombstones. Reliefs. Amphorae. Evidence of this early presence. The picture language of the Etruscans longed for realism, but realism was not. Synthetic like drawings in Lascaux. Linear. Frugal. Limited to a minimum. Almost operating with a symbol, although the Etruscans did not know this concept. Legendary are Etruscan couples, stone clay tombstones, where in strange non-anatomical poses the spouses are sitting and lying. As if they had just woken up, they looked to one side. This death according to Etruscan culture was domesticated, friendly. The beauty was in the slenderness, in the line reminiscent of Kenyan runners. Girls like gazelles, in lazy movements fill the artist’s studio like a strange palestra or spa. They stretch their hands up. They climb up, like cypresses.

Again, cypresses. Giuseppe del Debbio’s sculptures quote colors from nature. For example, the color of the trunk of an olive tree. Or olive leaves, as if covered with a white mist. Like a cobweb. Deep, velor cypress green. And Norwid’s words keep following me. Because beauty is to delight. It connected night with day. It gave meaning to everyday life. It stitched dreams with reality.

Justyna Napiórkowska