The Marble Institute: its Philosophy, its Image

The school of marble, the Institute "Pietro Tacca", titled to the famous sculptor of Carrara of the Seventh Century, author of sculptures beautifying squares all over Europe, was born in this special historical environment. It was the fin de siècle time, the nineteenth century, when a consortium of private and forecasting firms generated the school: they understood that only a school could instruct workers qualified to work, cut, compound, lathe, blank, and finish a marble work-piece.
But they believed above all in a school where one can learn how copying sculptures.
The sculpture tradition shall learn the sculpture techniques: using the dots, using the little machine allowing to reproduce gips, using the compasses to model the work-piece, to perform eye-sculpture above all for low-relief and decoration figures.
Later new techniques are developed, such as the computer aided machines, the computer aided drawing (Autocad), the numerical control machines. The world progress goes on, sometimes in good, sometimes in bad directions, and also the town and its cultural and economic resources, among which the Marble Institute.
The Institute can be proud on three features, which are really marvellous. They are neither Autocad, nor the computer laboratory, even if they have their importance…
They are the Plaster Cast Gallery Lazzerini and both sculpture laboratories, the one attended by young people of the Day Classes, and the other one, attended by people of the Evening Classes.
Both laboratories are the soul of the Institute. Marble means passion, poetry. Only people deep acquainted with it can experience such sensations. Late in the evening, even later than on 8 or 9 p.m. after a heavy work day, such people attend the laboratory to devote their time to sculpture. There are Italians, Foreigners such Japaneses, Lebaneses, Malagasians, Africans from Togo, and then Spaniards, Germans, Swisses. Marble makes the school, and together Carrara, a cosmopolitan place, more vital and heterogeneous, open to exchange the cultural traditions.
Who can visit the School, can better understand and share the activity inside the laboratories, in the noise of tools and scalpels.
Finally, understand what is really the Marble Institute, and then Carrara.
The Plaster Cast Gallery was left in heritage to the School by the family Lazzerini, a special family of business men and sculptors. The plaster casts, which are dated between half of eighteenth century and first years of twentieth century, trace back to cultural experiences able to transmit the power of the artistic message till today.
The Plaster Cast Galley is visited by Italian and Foreign tourists, so that the Municipal Administration of Carrara is thinking to organize a suitable museum space inside the School.
The heterogeneity of origin of people attending the Evening Classes, caused to find precise school strategies, able to admit and organize Italian language Classes for foreign students.
Also the participation to highly qualified European tenders is recurrent, in cooperation with European partners.
Recently, in October 2004, on the visit to Carrara of the President of the Italian Republic Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, the students of the fifth class presented him a marble head representing Pietro Tacca; the statue is now in the President Office in the Quirinale Palace.

We should also remember that on the CarraraMarmotec, the World Exposition yearly organized by the Internazionale Marmi e Macchine in Marina di Carrara, the Institute attends with own stand, from where its professional and cultural image is highlighted.

The Marble leads all above said activities. The students, the teachers, and the whole personnel employed in the Institute to work in favour of the town Carrara and the whole Apuanian province looks at this material respectfully.
To this regard, we should put into evidence this special attitude using the words of Marisa Vescovo, the woman who organized the Performance “Disegnare il Marmo” in the year 2004 “The marble owns, inside its DNA, an art of resistance to the time influence, and in the years it can become an isle, which the time is not able to scrape or deteriorate”.
Then, sharing these ideas, the whole Marble Institute “Pietro Tacca” – its teachers, technical, administrative, and managing personnel, aims to give its contribution, so that this isle can never be deteriorated by the time.