My Work at ‘Forma Viva’: A Sculpture Symposium at Portoroz, Yugoslavia

Leonurdo.Vol. 3, pp. 55-57. Pergamon Press 1970. Printed in Great Britain Inthissection of Leonardo textsnot exeeedingabout 1200wordswillbepublished. Notes will not be accompanied by abstracts and,generally, only three black and white illustrations will be allowed. Accepted Notes will be published more quickly than longer texts. Des textes ne dkpassant pas 1200 mots seront publids dans cette rubrique de Leonardo. Ces Notes paraitront sans rksumks. Elles pourront Ctre accompagnPes , de manizregknkrale, de trois illustrationsen noir et blanc. Les Notes acceptdes seront publikesplus rapidment que les textes plus longs. MY WORK AT ‘FORMA VIVA’: A SCULPTURE SYMPOSIUM AT PORTOROZ, YUGOSLAVIA Roger Barr* Introduction The annual symposium ‘Forma Viva’ seeks to bring together artists of various nationalities for common work, to help them with realizing the chance of independent, free artistic utterance and thus to popularize modern international and Yugoslav sculpture. Artists may carve in oak in one locale, weld iron and steel in several other locations and, in Portoroz on the Adriatic coast below Trieste, cut the local Istrian marble. In the summer of 1967, I was invited to come to Portoroz as an American in an international group of artists. Others in the group were David Thompson of England and his wife and helper, Persephone, a Japanese artist named ‘Tomita’ and a sculptor from Belgrade, who, contrary to the intention and spirit of the symposium, remained aloof, though he spoke French. Detailed information on the symposium can be obtained from Mr. Marjan Vidmar, Secretary Mednarodni Simpozij Kiparjev ‘Forma Viva’, Ljubljana, Yugoslavia. A symposium in some medium is held each summer, the medium varies each year. In 1967, the medium of cast concrete was offered four sculptors at Marbo, while we used marble at Portoroz. *Americanpainterandsculptorlivingat 30rue de Citeaux, 75-Paris 12, France. (Received27 July 1969.) My sculpture ‘Venusof Yugoslavia’ A two-ton cube of marble awaited me in a field, overwhelmingand densecompared to my Styrofoam maquette. The stone had a clear ring to it when struck. Hard for a marble but not brittle, it is the same stone Mestrovic used. I had only three weeks to do the piece, having arrived over a month later than the others due to teaching responsibilities in Paris. ‘Forma Viva’ offered me my first opportunity to make a sculpture on a monumental scale. I could not have done it in the time availablewithout a stone cutter named Vittorio, who came from the quarry of the marble’s origin. He was provided by the symposium for fifty hours of ‘roughingout’ and I paid him for another thirty hours from my living allowance. He would begin an hour before me in the morning. In fact, the ringing of his chisel and sledge was my alarm clock. I would have a swim in the clear Adriatic and a big breakfast, and then begin work at about seven. By then Vittorio would have removed all the stone I had marked out with grass stain or chalk the night before. We communicated in my elementary Italian, a language of his childhood, since that portion of the peninsula was under Italian control until World War 11. I strove to maintain as much of the mass of the original marble block as possible, the finished piece being over twice the size of the maquette, which itself was three times as large as the largest stone 55 56 Roger Barr Fig. I . View of'roiighed-out marble block for 'Venusof Yugoslac~ia', with maquette it1 background. Fig. 2. Front view of' Venusof Yugoslavia', marble, 170 x 1 1 0 x 94 cm, 1967. (granite) I had previously cut (cf. Fig. I). Working in the hot sun was wonderful, since a cool breeze cut across the peninsula where the sculpture park is located between two bays. The clear light made hard contrasts on the white stone. The trick was to keep the surface rough to soften the effect of light and shadow. A point tool was used throughout the entire operation and I did no polishing at all. Balance is a major objective in my work whether the material is wax, bronze or oak. I wanted the ponderous marble figure to soar in seeming casual Notes: My Work at ’Forma Viva’ 57...