Giuliano Mauri: the hidden gem out of the tourist flock

Five aisles and 42 columns made of 1800 fir wood poles, branches and iron nails. The trees planted inside the columns are growing up, one day they will break the structure around them. This “Vegetal cathedral”, a perfect metaphor of the relation between knowledge and spirit, was built on Mount Arera, Lombardy, in 2010, only a year after the death of his author, Giuliano Mauri. It is just an hour by car from Milan, on the top of a a hill from which you have an astonishing view. But rarely you find visitors around.

 

Giuliano Mauri is with no doubts the best Italian “land artist” of his generation. Born in 1938 in Lodi, near Milan, Mauri started as an artist in 1974, after having been a boxer and pasta producer. In 1976 he was invited at the Venice Biennial by the Italian critic Enrico Crispolti, and then a long and prolific carrier of art working, mostly spent in Italy, took him until 2002, when he was appointed in Milan to design one of the “Invisibles cities”, Zenobia, during the celebrations of the 30th Anniversary of the famous book written by Italo Calvino. All artworks by Mauri were made of interlace residual wood, and they were conceived to slowly decay, just as natural living elements. Probably that is why Mauri always had preferred to stay out of the art market and work only on commission.

July 17, 2015