On a warm and bright late spring morning, we travel through the orderly rows of vineyards in Franciacorta to reach Ome, a small hilltop town in the province of Brescia. This is where Giuseppe Bergomi lives and works, in a house immersed in greenery, suspended between nature and art. Welcoming us are Giuseppe and his wife Alma. We enter their world, passing through a garden that resembles a living artwork we will explore later: cypresses, Japanese maples, beeches, blooming roses, a small pond dotted with the first water lilies, black bamboo, and a multitude of plants that tell a story. Not only of nature, but of those who, with patience and care, have planted, nurtured, and lived among them. It is a landscape that speaks of memory, of shared moments, of time settling into things. A place that is at once a refuge, a studio, and a personal museum. Giuseppe greets us, invites us inside, introduces us to Alma, and together they offer us a coffee. Without preamble, enchanted and immediately drawn to Colazione nel letto, which dominates the room, we begin to talk. Of art, of space, of matter, of time and of life.
Talking with Giuseppe Bergomi is an experience that gradually captivates you. His way of thinking, of observing the world, of finding words, is truly fascinating. Born in 1953 in Brescia, he is considered one of the most profound and original voices in contemporary Italian art. After studying at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, he began his journey as a hyperrealist painter, but it was through sculpture that he found his true expressive language, a language shaped by matter, silence, and presence. His works, often in terracotta or bronze, explore the human figure as a place of memory and truth, intertwining everyday life and archetypes, intimacy and time.
Over the course of his career, he has exhibited in major institutions in Italy and abroad, participating in the Venice Biennale, the Rome Quadriennale, and numerous solo and group exhibitions. His sculptures are part of public and private collections, from Milan to Nagoya, from Monte Carlo to Sicily.
From painting to sculpture: the birth of a personal language
“It all started from discomfort. An inner problem that needed solving.” This is how Giuseppe Bergomi describes the moment he realized that sculpture would become his language. After a background in painting, he came to understand that painting, as it had evolved in his practice, was no longer enough. The images he derived from photography, though technically well-executed, did not return the depth and truth he was searching for. “The photographic image, whether good or bad, always had its own coherent language. Unfortunately, the painting that resulted from it did not. It always felt like something was missing.”
The turning point came almost by chance, during a visit to the exhibition Réalismes 1919–1939 at the Centre Pompidou. Among the many paintings that impressed him and from which he hoped to find new inspiration, it was instead two small polychrome terracotta sculptures that pointed the way: Portrait of the Artist’s Wife by Otto Gutfreund and Girl with Absinthe by Bedřich Stefan, two major Czechoslovak sculptors of the time.
It was then that he imagined one of his large paintings transformed into sculpture. He returned to Brescia, bought clay, and asked for help from a sculptor friend, Tullio Cattaneo. “I wanted to escape, through sculpture, from the conditioning of photography, to return, after a brief break, to painting. But instead, I never stopped.”
He has never considered himself an “academic” sculptor. His path began with the urgency to give form to an intuition, to make visible what is usually suspended, invisible, withheld. At the base of everything is drawing, as a way to see and understand reality. But it is in three-dimensional matter that everything takes shape: volume, weight, and time.
The human figure and everyday life as a language of the soul
For Bergomi, the human body is “an infinite book.” It is not to be narrated, but listened to. Never provocative or idealized, it is a form of silence that speaks, an apparition that condenses history, time, and intimacy. It’s no coincidence that many of his works are born from simple, everyday, familiar moments. Like Colazione a letto, one of the most intimate sculptures of his recent production: a large terracotta bed portraying the artist himself, his wife, one of his two daughters, and his granddaughters. A domestic scene, captured in the very moment when “nothing happens,” and precisely for that reason, universal.
It is within these minimal gestures that his reflection on time emerges—not historical or chronological time, but inner, lived, and held time. Each figure, even in stillness, seems to contain a tension. It doesn’t look at the viewer, doesn’t offer itself to a story. It simply exists.
“My sculptures don’t want to explain anything. They just want to be.”
No message to impose, no instruction manual: it will be the viewer’s gaze, shaped by their own experience and what they love, that gives meaning. And it is in this “being” that his idea of truth is revealed: a silent presence that does not impose itself, but remains.
Material and choices: each work has its own body
“Each sculpture has its own material.” Bronze or terracotta are never decorative choices, but intrinsic to the meaning. The artist never starts from the material: it is the work that calls for it. If a piece is born out of fragility, domestic life, everyday presence, like Colazione a letto, then it can only be in terracotta. “To make it in bronze or marble would have been a lie. Only clay could tell it as it was.” It’s not just a matter of texture: the very language of the work changes depending on the material. Bronze brings solemnity, durability, distance. Clay, instead, retains fragility, the surprise of the gesture, the impermanence of time.
And yet, despite technical difficulties, shrinkage of the clay, risky firing, structural fragility, Bergomi continues to choose this material. He does so consciously, like someone who accepts that a work has only one possible form. Because, in the end, material too, like the body, has a soul. And it must be respected.
Space
For Bergomi, place is never just a decorative pretext. In fact, it is often not even the starting point. “It’s rarely the space that gives birth to the work,” he told us. “Rather, when you have to think of something for a specific context, you start formulating a project that comes from an encounter: between what you want to do and what the space can receive.”
However, space remains “the primary element of sculpture.” A work must be placed, he says, “in a space, in a light.” This awareness took root during his first public monument, created for Japan: an experience that made him reflect on the relationship between sculpture and architecture. “To make human figures dialogue with monumental architecture,” he recounts, “I had to imagine structures capable of containing space, of building it. Only in this way could I place figures as small as 60 cm without them getting lost.” Alongside this external dimension is an interior one: for Bergomi, sculpture is not just placed in a space, it can become space itself, demanding a more intimate, collected kind of attention. It is the “space of reflection,” one that opens a dialogue between the work and the viewer’s personal perception.
Arte diffusa sulla costa toscana
From July 10 to November 3, Giuseppe Bergomi will be the protagonist of the exhibition Arte diffusa sulla costa toscana, an open-air exhibition project involving the villages of Bolgheri, Castagneto Carducci, and Casale Marittimo. Curated by Paola Maria Formenti, the initiative creates a dialogue between art and territory. Among the works on display, three were created specifically for the occasion: site-specific pieces conceived to resonate with the spaces that host them. Not a simple placement, but a true act of listening to the architectural, landscape, and symbolic context that guides and shapes the presence of the artwork. A reflection perfectly aligned with Bergomi’s poetics, where nothing is imposed and every gesture arises from a deep relationship with space and with those who inhabit it.
One of the most profound questions we asked ourselves concerns the relationship between Bergomi’s sculptures and the landscape of the Etruscan Coast. The archaic forms, the sense of time, the constant reference to the human figure suggested an almost natural affinity between his work and this territory. Bergomi’s response was clear: while it’s true that some works, such as Colazione a letto, evoke an “Etruscan-like” aesthetic, reminiscent of the Sarcophagus of the Spouses housed at the National Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia in Rome, his creative drive originates elsewhere.
“Everyday life is far more invasive than the past. But you read the everyday through what you love. And therefore, also through the memory of the past.”
And this is where the deepest difference with Etruscan art emerges: whereas the latter was created to celebrate death, to accompany the afterlife, Bergomi’s works seem to do the opposite. They do not anchor eternity in separation, but in life itself. In the tangible possibility of making the most ephemeral gestures, the most intimate affections, the most familiar presences endure. It is in this exchange between present and memory, between intimacy and landscape, that his sculptures find their place—not to celebrate history, but to inhabit it with discretion.
