Work: Wonder

Description

“As a blind person, it has always been my commitment to advance the right of everyone to enjoy art, each according to his/her own possibilities”, Felice Tagliaferri.

“Meravigliato”(Wonder) is a 39cm high marble sculpture that Tagliaferri, a blind sculptor, carved in 2007.
The statue shows the face of a man with an astonished expression.
Most of his hair has been shaved off to create a tonsure.
The lower half of his face is covered by a thick beard and a moustache which hides his upper lip. His nose is broad and his cheeks are full, smooth and rounded. The man’s mouth is open in an exclamation of surprise and his visible lower lip is fleshy. His eyes appear wide open below his large bushy eyebrows, but the typical expression lines of the forehead are missing, a detail that helps to make the face look younger.

On a tactile level, the sculpture plays on the contrasts between the smooth marble of the skin and the rougher hair and beard, where the individual locks are represented by long serried incisions in the marble.

Tagliaferri lost his sight at the age of 14, and entered the world of sculpture thanks to a course held by Nicola Zamboni.
The representation of the human face, caught in various situations, is a constant feature of his artistic production as well as being a mainstay of his teaching activities at the Chiesa dell’Arte, the plastic arts school that he founded. Being convinced that sculpture can bring the sighted and blind together, he teaches anyone who wants to approach this discipline.