On Sunday 27 February the volunteers of the AlpinI Group of Monastero Bormida placed a beautiful sculpture on the facade of the "Casa Alpina", under the plaque of the building's title to Sergeant Luigi Lazzarino (1892-1967), silver medal for military valor, in Langa stone made by the artist Nando Gallo from Vesimo and depicting an alpine hat against the backdrop of the mountains. Made with a refined bas-relief technique, the result of many hours of patient work to depict the images on a type of stone that is very difficult to work, the stone is a tribute to the Alpine identity, to the values that mountain soldiers and their families have represented and represent for Italy. It is also intended to be a warning of peace and brotherhood - in this period in which the war has become overwhelmingly topical - as evidenced by the call to the serenity of the mountains and the depiction of edelweiss, a delicate and rare flower that grows near the snow-capped peaks.
The President of the Group Gianfranco Cagno and the Mayor Gigi Gallareto, in inaugurating the sculpture, thanked the artist who showed great availability and promptly accepted with enthusiasm the invitation to create this work.
For about fifteen years Nando Gallo with his "stone faces", the masks, the anthropomorphic stones that recall ancient statues placed on the edge of the vineyards, has been telling stories with a strong bond with the territory and its inhabitants and has transformed the home garden his, in Vesime, in an open-air art exhibition, which can be visited by appointment. He is a self-taught person who began, by chance, to be carried away by the artistic instinct that he had kept within himself. He began by carving his mother's face in stone. Since that first creation, there has been a lot of work, with over 400 sculptures that were born from his inspiration. And today he is an appreciated artist capable of demonstrating the great versatility of this type of stone which is not only suitable for dry stone walls or the walls of farmhouses but which also knows how to transform itself, under the skillful and precise strokes of his chisel, into fantastic or real figures, in stories, legends, fantasies, and tales.
See also...
• Monastero Bormida tourist guide
