SCULPTOR RENZO BUTTAZZO

Renzo Buttazzo: Thirty Years with Lecce Stone | Antakly Projects
Antakly Projects  ·  Sculpture  ·  Salento Lecce, Puglia, Italy

Renzo ButtazzoThirty Years with Lecce Stone

Sculptor and designer working in Salento for three decades, transforming Lecce stone into organic forms that carry the light, the sea, and the Baroque of the south.

Salento  ·  Lecce Baroque Sculpture  ·  Luminous Bodies  ·  Furniture Limited Series  ·  Manual Craft
Renzo Buttazzo in his studio working with Lecce stone
Renzo Buttazzo

Renzo Buttazzo has been experimenting with Lecce stone for thirty years, transforming this ancient material with innovation and craftsmanship into an unmistakable style. His works convey a sense of lightness and softness made up of full and empty spaces, completely disconnected from the constraints of productivity and industrialisation. He recognises the true essence of the work only in operational manual skills.

His creations are produced in limited series and can be reproduced in any dimension. He has been recognised over the years for giving a new face to the sculptural object. His works range from sculptures to luminous bodies, from furniture to sculptural walls, helping to improve the possibilities of this ancient material. He currently collaborates with architects, gallery owners, and interior designers, creating works that furnish private homes and resorts for collectors across the world.

He is now working on very large outdoor works.

"It is precisely the imprecision and the margin of error that makes the work truly unique."
Renzo Buttazzo
The conversation
01

Tell us about your greatest inspirations and influences.

My style has been strongly influenced by the place where I live in Salento: a thousand-year-old land characterised by Lecce Baroque and a disruptive nature between sky and sea. The olive tree, coral sand, indented coasts, and a particular quality of light have always nourished my creativity. Only in nature can we perceive the beauty of the world in which we live.

02

How are current trends in technology and innovation affecting your work?

I come from a world where the fax was the best way to communicate with a gallery owner or store. Now I find myself on FaceTime with a client in New York making a direct commission. Technology can open extraordinary doors.

But technology can also distance us from the manual ability that has characterised our history: the work in which we perceive the spirit and love of those who created it through a process of dedication, precision, and shrewdness perceptible to the human eye. That is what makes a work truly unique, in contrast to 3D production which creates a work without margins of error. In my work it is precisely the imprecision and the margin of error that makes the work unique.

03

Tell us about your creative process.

Everything starts from a vision and above all from a philosophy. Organic forms can undergo unthinkable changes, hence a variety of immense stylistic choices. It is necessary to empty the mind: absolutely not to look at what other creatives are doing, and to look inside oneself, to let the creative space of our mind be free from any trend. It is only then, in the absolute emptiness, that you will find the essence of creation.

04

What do you think about the art world?

Art is an extraordinary reality in continuous evolution and totally free to interpret: fundamental for the human being who needs to nourish the soul with beauty and culture. Its use has deteriorated over the years due to the commercialisation of the web, which has made people believe that through contests they could emerge from anonymity. The world of art has become so commercialised that it has lost the magic of discovery by the gallery owner of a truly evolved and capable artist.

The artist is a witness to the contemporary, living with the aim of feeding the minds of the future.

05

Is there anything else you would like to share?

I would like to address the new generations and invite them not to look at what has already been done, but at what you can do while looking to the future. Above all, do not be subjugated by what others think. Feel free. You are the future and you have the duty and the conscience to make it better. We believe in you.

Salentoand Lecce Stone
Puglia, Italy
Baroque
Olive & Sea
Limestone
Thousand years

Lecce stone, or pietra leccese, is a golden limestone quarried in the Salento peninsula of southern Puglia. Its particular softness makes it exceptionally workable when freshly cut, hardening as it dries: a quality that the Baroque master builders of Lecce exploited to produce the extraordinary decorative facades that define the city, and that Renzo Buttazzo has spent thirty years exploring in an entirely different direction.

Where the Baroque impulse was to add, to accumulate, to elaborate, Buttazzo's impulse is to remove: to find the organic form that was already present in the stone and reveal it through subtraction, imprecision, and the particular responsiveness of a material shaped by a particular place. The olive groves, the light off the Adriatic, the colour of coral sand: all of it is in the stone, and in the hands that work it.

"Only in nature can we perceive the beauty of the world in which we live."
Renzo Buttazzo

Stay curious,

Leila Antakly

Leila Antakly

Leila Antakly is the founder and editor of Antakly Projects, the independent cultural platform she launched in New York in 2003 as Ninu Nina. Syrian and Colombian, she began her career at Vogue Italia and has spent more than twenty years in conversation with artists, musicians, designers, photographers, and inspiring thinkers around the world.

https://www.ninunina.com/
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