Padula

Like people and their lives, the hues and patterns of marble form virtually infinite variations: Alga Marina. St. Florient Rose. Arabescato, pure white rippling with silver waves. Calacatta Vagli. Rosso Antico. Porta Santa. Perlato. Bianco Venato. Rosa Norvegia. Giallo Siena, warm as the terracotta roofs of its native Tuscany.

Marble has shaped the days of Enzo Vicente Gallo, from the umber-flecked stone of his birthplace in southern Italy, to the treadworn stairwell at the San Alejandro National School of Fine Arts in Havana and the fluted columns of his Florida studio.

The childhood of Enzo Gallo evolved around marble. All 14 of his uncles were in the marble business, whether at the quarry, in the cutting or polishing shops, or in the final shaping and polishing of architectural and art works, like his father, a fifth-generation marble worker.

When not making an installation of marble in a home or chiseling away at a commissioned work for the local cemetery, much of father Bruno Gallo's time was spent at the nearby Monastery of San Lorenzo. Founded in 1306, its statuary, frescoes and majolica floors were being painstakingly restored. In addition, Bruno also taught classes in his home each evening for as many as 15 apprentices. After conducting the practical side of marble design, shaping, and installation during the day, Bruno taught his evening students architectural drawing, a field he mastered in the Italian Army during World War I, when he was a construction foreman in North Africa. Sometimes Bruno would lecture to his class about Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and oU,.er masters, and Enzo would listen closely. Even as a boy, he knew what he wanted to be more than anything else: a master sculptor, just like the artists his father talked about.

When he was ten, Enzo presented his mother with his first piece of marble sculpture, a diminutive lion, possibly inspired by the tawny color of the local stone. When Bruno Gallo saw his son's handiwork, he was not pleased.

"We already have too many poor marble artisans and sculptors in the Gallo family. Italy needs engineers. You are going to be an engineer:' And he forbade his son to do any more sculptures.

To disobey his father was unthinkable for Enzo, but it takes more than an-unrelenting father to kill a dream. Every day in school Enzo spent as much time as he could drawing the works he wanted to sculpt, and whenever his father was away from his shop, Enzo slipped in and chipped away, practicing on scraps of marble. "It was like playing cat and mouse;' Enzo recalls. "When he left to visit an architect or a builder, I would go in and take up a mallet and chisel. When I heard him coming back, I would hide my work:'

Those were the sunny days, before Padula was overrun by Mussolini's soldiers and bombed by Allied airplanes. Enzo was barely a teenager when World War II began, and as one of the oldest of ten brothers and sisters, he felt the brunt of the family's struggle to survive.

Many of the men of Padula went to war; few returned. Bruno Gallo, who had served in Eritrea with the Italian Army during the first world war, was old enough by then to escape the draft. But no one in Padula escaped the war.

The great monastery of San Lorenzo became a stockade for prisoners; first for Allied troops, and later in the war for Germans and Italians. Restoration was halted. The little construction being done was of a utilitarian nature, with no need for artisans in marble like Bruno Gallo. To survive, Bruno and his oldest son, Enzo, went to work carving souvenirs in marble for the prisoners and their relatives who came to visit them.

Times were hard. Italy's economy was destroyed. Many of the better schools were closed or in ruins, and their teachers dead or scattered across war-torn Europe. Bruno and his wife Vicenzina talked long into the nights, finally reaching a painful decision: the older children had to be sent to relatives who could care for them.

Enzo, the oldest son, was the first to leave. He was to go to Havana to live with an uncle.