Carrara

Although its name was synonymous with marble for more than four centuries, Carrara itself has become a largely industrial city, with most of the marble sculpture of the region being produced in nearby Pietrasanta and Querceta.

Enzo headed for Pietrasanta. For an artist with his background, it was a simple matter to find a marble shop that needed another apprentice sculptor. "I wanted to work in as many different shops as I could;' Enzo says, "because I felt that I could learn something from each one. There were lots of young marble workers there, just like me, and all of us wanted the same thing: the opportunity to work with someone really good, like Nicolina, a very well-known sculptor there, and the experience ·of working on different styles of sculpture, in different kinds of marble, and with different people.

"I spent two years there altogether, and for a while I specialized in mosaics, because I had always loved the material. I grew up with mosaics in Padula, and of course I had seen Byzantine mosaics around Italy and had studied them at the Academy. But this was my first chance to really get into the composition of the pigments to make the different colors and the technical processes to hold the mosaic together:'

Along with practical knowledge, Enzo'.s years in the Carrara region gave him intimate exposure to two of the leading sculptors of our time: Henry Moore and Jacques Lipchitz. "Lipchitz was working both in marble and bronze then, and the foundry he used was near the studio where I was working. Every day I used to watch him and his helpers as they finished the plaster and began getting them ready for casting.

"I'll never forget those plasters, their angles and the way the light played on them. The way he handled mass, the balance of his pieces his work was superb. And most of all, I admired Lipchitz' use of negative space within the work. All of us with a background in classical sculpture were fascinated with the 'holes' in the middle of his pieces, and how he could put those spaces to work, just as we would carve a solid block of marble:'

Another nearby atelier housed the marble and bronze sculptures of Henry Moore. "I met Moore, and also Lipchitz. I spoke only Italian and Spanish-about all we could say was, 'How's it going?; and 'That piece is looking good: But their work was important to me. They influenced my thinking for years, and they probably still influence my work:'