Italian sculptor Bruno Walpoth’s ability to turn a hunk of wood into a lifelike looking figure is impressive, to say the least. His sculpted and painted busts and human forms are anything but “wooden.” They seem to be imbued with emotion, capable of possessing a soul and striking the viewer as pensive, thoughtful – even melancholy.
Bruno Walpoth’s Wood Sculptures
Art essayist Danila Serafini writes about Bruno Walpoth’s wood sculptures “He uses resistant lime wood or lead leaf foils which he lays out on the wood and hammers as in an embossed work. Here it’s as if for a very brief moment flesh has turned into metal, a deaf and bleak metal that devours all thoughts and releases the weight of solitude and introspection; the skinny and bony face is moulded on the hollow spaces where the sculptor reveals himself. And when the eyes send deep desolate gleams or when they express astonishment and amazement, or, furthermore, when they are closed, it’s always the silent torment of doubt that we grasp from the artist’s soul.”
The process of creating ‘Julia’:
Julia:
Bruno at work in his studio:
A selection of his works:
Bruno Walpoth‘s human figures created from limewood or walnut come about as a result of his meeting and dealing with models. On a scale of one-to-one, the bodies, lines and forms of the few young, gaunt men and the myriad of beautiful women take shape from the block of wood by means of his hands. Although Walpoth is attracted to producing concrete likenesses of body parts, such as a shoulder or ankle, and he is pleased with the successful outcome, his concern is not only for a hyper-realistic portrait of the person who stands before him: In his or her outward appearance, the model serves as a cover surface for implied projections. Granted, the facial features and body forms correspond to those of the models, but Bruno Walpoth reduces the strong individual characteristics of the personality in his sculptural representation – those that would constitute the individuality in the classical sense of the portrait.- Lisa Trockner
Bruno Walpoth
all images and Lisa Trockner quote courtesy of the artist