Biography

Matteo Raciti is a sculptor of Sicilian origins. He grew up among the construction sites for the construction of wagons at the Carnival of Acireale, where he made a life as a shop and a lot of apprenticeship. Graduated in Architecture from the University of Catania in 2015, he joined Marcello Giorgi’s studio in Pietrasanta (LU). After collaborating with Alessandro Advini and Gilbert Lebigre and Corinne Roger’s La Compagnia del Carnevale, he participates with him in papier-mâché sculptures at the Viareggio Carnival, earning first prizes from 2017 onwards. For some years he has lived in Viareggio. In Pietrasanta he is part of the collective “INTRECCIArte” and together he manages a space in which he exhibits his works. Since 2019 the village of Pitigliano (GR) welcomes its new Atelier-gallery with a permanent exhibition. Since 2021 the Borgo Museo di Pistoia hosts his first sculpture destined for a public place. Many others will follow in various parts of Italy …

Philosophy

The sea, mythology, introspection are some of the themes he most loves to tell with poetry and delicacy through sculpture. His creatures can be small clay statues or giants in papier-mâché: in any case, Matteo Raciti always manages to give life and feeling to the figures that come out of his surprising imagination to immediately become new or renewed stories. The features and expressions of the faces that he represents allow the public to immediately recognise the sculptor’s signature. The emotions and motivations, however, are always different and closely linked to the territory and culture that the artist decides to pay homage or to the anthropological and social theme that he wants to investigate.

Artwork in Castagno

Once upon a time there was the Castle of Castagno. And the Queen Ansa! Do you know this story? Obviously it is told in the Guide Book Castagno di Piteccio – the museum village of Pistoia but also on the site. Here, however, you will find a slightly different story, which could be titled “from Lost Castle to Rediscovered Castle”. Therefore: the Castle of Castagno, according to some ancient cadastral maps, seems to be located about two kilometres from the current village, in an area that in the 19th century took the name of Saletto. Unfortunately the Castle – where the Lombard queen Ansa stayed during her period in Tuscany – was destroyed in the 15th century due to still mysterious circumstances. The Castle, however, played a fundamental role in the history and identity of Castagno: its ruins, in fact, were used for the construction of the first residential area of ​​the town that we still see and know today as Castagno di Piteccio. Transported to what was previously called the Villa (an area around the fortress where the community that cultivated the land lived), the stones thus served to erect new walls and houses where today we can “read” the past: here and there for the village are evident various engravings, some bear medieval symbols, others testify to the foundation of the town around 1600.

Let’s jump a few centuries and get to today: during the Borgo Museo Festival 2021, precisely on Friday 25 June, “Il Castello Ritrovato” or the terracotta sculpture by Matteo Raciti for Castagno was inaugurated. In May of the same year, the artist had brought his traveling studio to Castagno di Piteccio to create his first sculpture for an open-air museum. A few months earlier, during his first visit to the Borgo Museo, invited by his friend Lucrezia Giordano (castagnola and art historian), he had decided to dedicate and donate one of his sculptures to the town, noticing a stone base ready to welcome his idea (that base had once housed another sculpture that has unfortunately been lost). So before the Festival he returned to Castagno for a few days, transferring his traveling studio from Versilia and setting it up in the heart of the town, in the small square, to work on his first sculpture destined for a public place. The new work, inaugurated on the occasion of the Borgo Museo Festival 2021, is a real tribute to the history of the town: here, inspired by the mysterious origins of the village, in the midst of the curiosity of inhabitants and visitors, between conversations and attentive silences, Matteo Raciti he transformed the clay into the body and face of a woman who dreams-supports a castle or rather “The Rediscovered Castle”. Thus the Borgo Museo di Pistoia has finally found her Castle and Queen Ansa has returned to live in Castagno di Piteccio.

Note: a special thanks in this case goes to Lucrezia Giordano and her family for having invited and hosted the artist in Castagno.

Above, a short video by Rocco Toscano describing the creation of the sculpture. Photos and videos of the Borgo Museo Festival 2021 instead can be found at this link: www.castagnodipiteccio.org/borgomuseo-festival-2021