The city of Carrara has an ancient and solid tradition in the field of artistic marble working, the vitality of which is ensured by the many studios and workshops still active in the area.
The constant influx of stonemasons from Pisa, Orvieto, Florence, and Genoa had profoundly affected the formation of skilled labor in the city: by the beginning of the 15th century, the many skilled quarrymen were being joined by the first Carrara artisans capable of performing marble work of a decorative or architectural nature, traces of which emerge above all in the great construction site of Pisa Cathedral.
The first decades of the sixteenth century, with Michelangelo’s frequent sojourns, and the opening of an important workshop, led by Domenico Fancelli (1469-1519) and Bartolomé Ordóñez (1480-1520), engaged in working on prestigious works for the Spanish court, gave an enormous impetus to the birth of a local “school” of sculpture. Many were then the stonemasons who, having left their native Carrara, reached Rome and Naples, but also Cremona, Messina, Palermo, and Loreto. Even the most gifted among the sculptors from Carrara had to emigrate: Danese Cattaneo (ca.1509-1572) went to Venice, Pietro Tacca (1577-1640), settled in Florence, while Francesco Baratta (1595-1666), Giuliano Finelli (1602-1653) and Domenico Guidi (1625-1701), were protagonists of the most intense season of Roman Baroque.
During the course of the 18th century this situation began to change, with the return to the city of Giovanni Baratta (1670-1747), who abandoned a prestigious Florentine studio in favor of the family workshop in the “Baluardo” district; the great international successes of Baratta, and his nephew and continuator Giovanni Antonio Cybei (1706-1784), were essential for the establishment of a network of workshops and the birth of an Academy of Fine Arts (1769).
The Napoleonic regime fully understood the potential, in terms of propaganda, of this cultural background, and turned the city into a huge workshop with the opening of the government sculpture ateliers (1808), in which thousands of busts of the imperial family, reproductions of ancient statues and decorative marble elements were made.
The nineteenth century was the “golden century” for Carrara’s great art studios: the workshops of the various Fontana, Lazzerini, Nicoli, Triscornia, etc. prospered by sending original works and copies all over the world, or by translating into marble models of great contemporary authors, who were happy to rely on their expert hands.
This custom remained alive throughout the twentieth century, when the Nicoli studio alone found itself hosting (among others), Leonardo Bistolfi (1859-1933), Mario Sironi (1885-1961), Arturo Martini (1889-1947), Fausto Melotti (1901-1986), Carlo Sergio Signori (1906-1988), Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010), Augustin Càrdenas (1927-2001) and Giuliano Vangi (1931-2024). Also in the new millennium, works by living artists such as Maurizio Cattelan, Jan Fabre, Paul McCarthy, Jeff Koons, and Quayola have been performed in Carrara.
Alongside this “high” tradition, there has always existed an artisanal supply chain capable of providing valuable support to the larger studios, and of producing artifacts of a decorative or architectural nature, while in recent years, thanks to the most recent technological innovations, production related to design and furniture has also had great impetus.
The best opportunity to discover this articulated universe is provided by the “Carrara Studi Aperti” event, which for more than a decade has organized weekends with special openings and guided tours of the area’s art and craft workshops. There are more than sixty ateliers participating in the initiative, and the number (in itself substantial for a city of less than sixty thousand inhabitants), certainly does not claim to be exhaustive in representing the complex local reality. The network of “Carrara Studi Aperti” is not limited to sculpture workshops but includes painting, theater, ceramics, multimedia installations and much more.
Of a different tenor are the works exhibited in the annual “White Carrara” event, organized by the Municipality of Carrara and Carrara Fiere in the city’s historic center (starting in June): born in 2011 as “Carrara Marble Weeks,” the event focused mostly on the world of design, but came to take on other valences with subsequent editions, with greater attention to crafts and artistic production.
This cultural vibrancy earned the city the prestigious recognition as a Unesco Creative City (2017), including its workshops in an important international circuit: in the “Creativity Forum” held in Carrara in 2021, the “Carrara Charter on Art and Crafts as Tools for Sustainable Urban Development” and the “Carrara Declaration on the Role of the Artist and Craftsman,” documents that aim to provide guidelines for the involvement of local communities in the creation of the city-laboratory of the future, were then approved.