Strong as the Lecce stone, which bears the marks of time but does not yield
by Francesca Rizzo
“Sometimes there are stories so strong that the fragile surface of paper cannot contain them,
they perhaps need to be engraved on fragments of stone that already communicate and on whose summit the future will be born.”- Salvatore Sava
Its creator, Salvatore Sava, called it the “Peace Column”: it is the work that female reporters speaking at the 2017 Mediterranean Women Journalists Forum will receive as a gift.
A sculpture made of Lecce stone, a typical material of the Salento region, to pay homage to the Inviate di pace: the female journalists who daily defy sexist stereotypes and difficult scenarios (conflicts, criminal environments, omerto contexts) to do their work: unearth the truth, wherever it hides, and communicate it.
Like the Lecce stone, the women chroniclers face bad weather (natural the former, cultural the latter) and are scarred by it, but not defeated: they carry those wounds in their souls as trophies, from which they are pushed forward with courage and determination.
// THE SCULPTOR Salvatore Sava, an artist from Surbo, a town in the province of Lecce, has been devoted to art since he was a child, when he made clay figurines for the nativity scene when he was only six years old. Studies at the Lecce High School of Art, first, and the Academy of Fine Arts, later, added technical skill to the vocation.
The Salento artist’s works are imbued with a strong civic connotation, from ecological commitment to the defense of democracy
In 1983, his first solo exhibition, followed by many others, set up in prestigious exhibition spaces such as the Carlo V Castle in Lecce and the San Carlo Gallery in Milan. Among his admirers, curator of numerous exhibitions, art critic and historian Luciano Caramel.
With his works he also participated in international exhibitions such as the 14th Quadriennale d’Arte in Rome (2005) and the 54th Venice Biennale (2011). Awards received over the years include the International Sculpture Prize Terzo Millennio, at Terra Moretti in Erbusco (Bs, 2006) and the Mastroianni Prize, awarded during the sixth International Sculpture Biennial of the Piedmont Region, in Turin (2008). His works have traveled throughout Italy, and today are part of highly prized public and private collections.
Since 1990 Salvatore Sava has been a teacher at the Academy of Fine Arts in Lecce, where, over the years, he has been assigned the chairs of Engraving Techniques, Drawing, Decoration Techniques and Technologies, Didactics of Representation Techniques, Analysis and Design of Environmental Art, Sculpture, and Artistic Anatomy.
Although he is passionate about other art forms such as photography and painting, Salvatore Sava prefers sculpture, through which he addresses themes dear to him because they are linked to his land and topical issues such as ecology.
Salvatore Sava molds the material to build works of ethical and civic commitment, as evidenced by the “Peace Column,” an award and at the same time an incitement to build, stone by stone, a democracy that can truly call itself such.
