ARTE SELLA

ARTE SELLA
I visited Arte Sella many times, as we bring all friends that come and visit us in Valsugana (Trentino) there, for at least half day. No matter the season (although with the snow the site really becomes fairytale), Arte Sella makes a great impression to everyone, and remains in your memory for a very long time.

Deep in the woods, in a secluded valley without hotels, resorts, or restaurants, you don’t expect to find human creations dialoguing and rivalling in size and beauty with the trees, with the stones, with the streams, with the mountain itself. The impact is strong, the sense of peace and harmony is regenerating.

An idea came in 1986 to three local friends (philosopher Charlotte Strobele, who owned a house with garden there, artist Emanuele Montibeller, architect and urbanist Enrico Ferrari): creating a continuous dialogue between art and nature, in order to renew the territory, giving life to a new form of tourism.

Unlike Land Art, where the artist is the protagonist, the artistic movement to which Arte Sella belongs, Art in Nature, is based on a total symbiosis between the environment and the creator. The materials of which the works are made, trunks, branches, leaves, stones, will be transformed during time by nature itself.

In about ten years things developed, and the initial space, the garden of Villa Strobele, was sided by the path along the southern side of Mount Armentera, where visitors can walk in the woods and discover the works from different viewpoints. Where the works will disappear, new creations will substitute them.

One of the marvels of Arte Sella came in 2011, when the artist Giuliano Mauri featured his first Vegetable Cathedral: the installation, divided in three ‘naves’ has the size of a real Gothic 0121-1110= cathedral, the 80 columns formed by intertwined branches, with a hornbeam tree planted in each of them. The trees will grow, the columns that support them will disappear, and of course we’ll go back whenever we can…

Another iconic installation is 0121-1110=115075 is a huge wooden portal by Jaehyo Lee, that works on both sides as a majestic frame for a spectacular landscape, and looks to us as a sun rising from the forest.

Another preferred art piece is Henrique Oliveira’s Common Root (2019), that looks like an enormous oak grown with a giant knot in its middle (it is in fact the fruit of a patient assemblage of two different trunks).

During the night between October 28 and 29, 2018, the terrible Vaia storm, that changed the aspect of the Alps forever, unrooted 14 million trees, and seriously damaged the 50% of Arte Sella installations.

Since that horrible night Arte Sella, although deeply wounded, has found its route to rebirth. Today it is somehow difficult to detect the marks of the tremendous destruction. Vaia’s Scream, by Vera Bonaventura and Roberto Mainardi, reproducing the real voice of the tempest in a room, witnesses the resilience of this institution and its immutable love for art and nature. You’ll find it scary and moving at the same time.

Arte Sella is open every day except on Christmas Day. Please apply if you’d like to visit it with one of our experts. Write to info@walksinsideitaly.com. The path isn’t difficult and this is an ideal tour even for families with small children.