This post is also available in: Italiano (Italian)

Nivola Museum was opened in 1955, in Orani, in what used to be the ancient wash house on the slope of a hill; this new facility was dedicated to Costantino Nivola, a local artist who combined the values and traditions of Sardinia with the most contemporary European and American ones – his work was particularly appreciated especially in the United States.

The museum, recently restored, launched a new section in the valley area: the “Nivola Park”, created by the architect Sebastiano Gaias between 2005 and 2008. In the entrance courtyard, there’s an ancient spring from which pours water into the dirt section of this facility, bringing together the raw materials loved by Nivola and permanent sources of inspiration: earth, stone, lime, cement, and nature itself.

The exhibition space hosts some of the artist’s most important works, such as the male and female monumental sculptures made of marble, bronze and travertine: they clearly evoke the native places that Nivola brought with him across the ocean and entrusted to his writings and drawings – several houses and streets decorated with vegetable gardens, solid stone terraces and pure Mediterranean vegetation.

On one of those grassy areas, the “Fonte” masterpiece stands out, a posthumous creation based on the artist’s sketches which symbolizes metamorphosis and the latest reinterpretation of the myth of the “mother of the woods”.

This post is also available in: Italiano (Italian)