User:Maxp82/sandbox/Gibo Perlotto

Gibo Perlotto

He is acknowledged as one of the leading international exponents of contemporary hyper-realist blacksmith art.

Biography
Gibo is the fourth descendant of an ancient family of ironwork masters, the great-grandfather Antonio Lora was also one of the greatest artistic exponents for the working of iron between the end of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. He started working in the 80s, led by his father Germano Perlotto, learning the techniques of metal forging. After having worked for several important art workshops, he began to experiment specifically on iron and bronze work, trying with lost-wax casting methods and preservative finishings of metals, repoussage and chiselling techniques. Over the years he also restored the “Archangel St. Michael and the Dragon”, a 1903 artwork by Antonio Lora, placed on the top of bell tower of Trissino (Vicenza) and the statue of Fabio Filzi by Giuseppe Zanetti in Arzignano (Vicenza), a 1925 artwork.

Gibo's Verismo was also explained by his friend Mario Rigoni Stern who wrote about him: "In his father's workshop he learned the art of working iron which, together with that of terracotta, is one of the most ancient. In his memory, however, he still preserves the images and the use of very old objects, that today technology has replaced with others much more practical and effective but which do not have, however, the imprint of human hands. Only the spirit of a poet could think of them; let us stop them in time and in memory with the white forged iron beaten on the anvil; we transmit their memory forever for what they have been in the lives of so many people and for what they can suggest us. So here is the consumed straw “carèga” (chair, in venetian dialect), the tabàro (cloak, in venetian dialect), the monèga (old bed-warmer), the bigòlo (arched tool used for carrying large baskets or buckets of water on the shoulder), the guitar with the broken strings and the unstuck sound box, the tajàpan (old tool used to cut stale bread) ... Now they are fixed forever in the solidity of the metal even for those who have labile memory, or for those who had not seen them in use: they are here to convey to us a poor time, yes, but perhaps rich in other things we have lost."

Gibo makes his art a continuous search for those memories of human culture from which technology is slowly and inexorably moving further away. His themes are: the Books, the Chairs, the Vegetable Garden, the artworks of the peasant memory cycle, the Painting Easels, the Metal-morphoses, the Cracks. Objects that evoke an ancient world, which recall our origins, our history, which we should never forget to continue to grow in the dimension of men. Because this increasingly virtual world is changing our perceptions, our senses, our relationships; in the end it will also change our feelings, our emotions, our sharing, and finally ourselves, if we do not know how to protect ourselves, preserving the memory of our history, of our becoming. We are children of a civilization coming from the fire and Gibo, with fire, forges artworks that remind us that everything, even the Web - the phenomenal "global spider web" in which we will increasingly be bound - originates from there, from fire, like a book, a straw chair, a tomato branch from the vegetable garden.

Personal Exhibitions

 * "Over the metal", Baden, Austria, 1996
 * "Along the Danube", Neu Ulm, Germany, Museo Edwin Scharff,2000
 * "Peasant Memory", Reims, France, 2001
 * "Biennale Internazionale Palagio Fiorentino Stia", Arezzo, Italy, 2005
 * "Vi-Art", Vicenza, Monte di Pietà, Italy, 2008
 * "Le nevi di Mario Rigoni Stern", Arcore, Italy, Villa Borromeo d'Adda, 2012
 * "Raise me up", Venice, Italy, Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, 2013
 * "Pope Francis blesses the manger of Bethlehem),", Vatican, Piazza San Pietro, 2015
 * "The art in the Palace", Bologna, Italy, Galleria Farini Concept, 2015
 * "Casa Maestra", Feltre, Italy, Palazzo Borgasio, 2016
 * "The enigma of the real", Montecchio Maggiore, Italy, Galleria Civica, 2018