Luciano Bertolotto

I've been a cabinetmaker, carpenter, and restorer for more than 50 years. For more than twenty years I've dedicated myself to wood carving, creating compositions with recycled wood from antique furniture, floors, and barrels. My sculptures are assembled by interlocking, without the use of nails, so I give new life to centuries-old woods. I work in a large shed in the countryside of Verona. Here dozens and dozens of sculptures assembled over the years, surround me during my work. I create wooden sculptures with a variety of subjects influenced by vernacular and primitive styles.

I am a self-taught artist, I learnt the work in an atelier since I was a child and from there I worked with wood for my whole life.

I've been looking a lot at religious wooden sculptures in our churches, at simple local furniture and at everyday wooden objects. Also, I've always been fascinated by primitivist art such as African sculptures and masks. So I try to reproduce a simple and primitive gesture of creation.

wood, sculpture, abstract, naif, primitive, assemblage