Borgo Museo | Sculture 1976 – 2004
Biography
Nado Canuti is known as an artist and as a partisan. He was born in Bettolle, in the province of Siena on 6 August 1929. His strong personality and his decision led him when he was only fourteen years old to join the Resistance. He and some friends have the task of collecting weapons to be delivered to the Resistance and sometimes defusing German mines. It happens that, handling one of the recovered devices, it explodes in his hand and causing the traumatic amputation of his left hand and some fingers of his right. Then arrested by the Nazi-Fascists, he is subjected to stringent interrogations but does not let any information that could be useful to his enemies escape. When he is released for his age and conditions he does not give up and the fight continues. In 1950 he began his activity as a painter and later on self-taught sculpture. Also taking an interest in graphics and goldsmithing. He established himself as a sculptor not only in Italy but also abroad.
Philosophy
Canuti makes an attempt to express in his art that set of feelings, ideas, impulses that form his inner reality. Nado gives matter, volume and space to facts that have none other than in a symbolic sense, it makes the transition from a spiritual entity to a material entity. His plastic language is defined in a stylisation of expressionist ancestry that evolves over the years into a more abstract synthesis. Favorite subjects can be defined as forms assembled by interlocking, decomposable and mutable in a germinating mechanics of magical stylisation. In his first works he manages to perfectly express the extreme loneliness he experiences while over time he also experiments the themes of love and the couple and then moves on to develop the theme of unity between man and the cosmos. The characters are often abstract or vaguely anthropomorphic figures in which Nado seeks the “absolute form”, therefore complete and perfect. Given the multifaceted creativity, we find some works by him that tell stories and even fascinate, in fact he has the ability to clearly express strong feelings through his art.
Artwork in Castagno
The work of Nado Canuti present in the central square of the village is Orizzontale (Horizontal). In fact, the sculpture represents a person lying with his head stretched upwards. Like many of his works, this one is also stylised, we can in fact recognise that it is a human figure only from the head. In the rest of the body, one can only recognise the positions of the legs, torso and arms. The thin and weak limbs almost seem to be tightened in a vise and the character shows himself tense as in an attempt to free himself, as evidenced by the muscles of the neck that seem strained and the expression of the face. This apparent inability to move causes a feeling of helplessness and pain. Despite the stylised shapes and clear lines that form the image of the body, it almost seems to move with a lot of effort and slowness and with the mouth still open. In fact, it seems immortalised and fixed in time in a moment of complete effort and tension.