Geometrie dell’anima (Geometries of the Soul)

The artist, born in Pula and also an accomplished painter, has behind him an intense artistic career and solid training, enabling him to work with masterful confidence. In Pietra Piasentina, he imprints a rigorous interweaving of geometric forms, whose surfaces alternate textured patterns created through bush-hammering and scratching. 

His sculpture expresses the will to overcome the constraints imposed by matter, transforming it into an essence of defined forms — aptly described as “geometries of the soul”. 

— Marco Marra

In Geometrie dell’anima, we find the will to simplify reality, synthesising it through simple broken, vertical and oblique lines. Three-dimensionality is enhanced by the varied surface treatment: smooth areas are set in continuity with bush-hammered and incised ones, suggesting movement and the continuous evolution of reality. 

This is an attempt to reproduce the essence of what surrounds us, highlighting its most important structural elements, sometimes hidden beneath appearances.

Born in Pula in 1935, Gualtiero Mocenni spent his formative years in Istria before moving to Italy in 1956. Firmly rooted in his homeland, Gualtiero Mocenni grew up with the light of Istria in his eyes and heart. 

Painter and sculptor, he continuously evolved across both disciplines. His early pictorial works were landscapes from life, somewhat related to a post-impressionist language. Gradually he abandoned the figurative style, favouring the study of geometric forms dominated by vertical and horizontal lines, until reaching full abstraction in the 1960s. 

In sculpture as well, we witness a progressive geometric simplification of forms, which assume a precise symbolic value. This character becomes even more defined in 1970, when Mocenni began an extensive production linked to the themes of Obelisks, Islands and Chrysalis-figures.

He held his first solo exhibition in Milan in 1970. Since then, he has exhibited in major international galleries and participated in numerous sculpture symposia in the United States, Russia, Greece and Croatia.