The Extraordinary Realism In Ilaria Gasparroni’s Marble Works

Artist and sculptor.

Writer Claudia Cusano

Ilaria Gasparroni photo ©Riccardo Piccioni.

The quarries of Carrara, where Michelangelo spent stretches of time centuries ago, is where Ilaria Gasparroni sources her marble. “Sculpture is the best expression that represents man,” says the graduate from the Academy of Fine Arts of Urbino, where she specialized in marble and stone techniques. Gasparroni’s work is rooted in the contemporary and expresses an extraordinary realism. And while her repertoire includes busts and faces, it is the everyday objects she sculpts that enchant. Gasparroni has a great passion for books, and “if not sculpture, I would have probably been a writer,” she states. Her piece Le città sommerse depicts a submerged city sculpted within the stack of pages of an open book.