Word: nivola
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...never went to school, that is why I like to teach," says sculptor Constantine Nivola. Actually, Nivola, who is an instructor at the School of Design, did for a time attend the Institute Superiore d'Arte of Milan. The school, modeled after Germany's famed Bauhaus, was intended to give Italian architects and designers the same scientific theoretical training that established the renown of the great German academy. In a typically Italian manner, Nivola comments that the institute at Milan didn't even get around to translating the Bauhaus' declaration of principles. "Freedom was the main thing," Nivola recalls, "just...
...admitted that he as well as the other students often felt lost in this atmosphere. This caused them to turn for inspiration to Mario Marini, the great contemporary Italian sculptor, who was at that time attached to the institute. But, according to Nivola, his help consisted of little more than shouting to the boys while on the way to his studio "Coraggio Ragazzi" (Courage Boys...
...Nivola takes his own teaching very seriously. As for his particular method, he teaches what he knows, which means that most of his students can be found experimenting with his block and sand sculpture. He encourages them to read and participate in other arts as well; because he is dedicated to the Renaissance ideals of the universal man and universal art even in this age of specialization. A good sculptor, he believes, should be familiar with the traditions of architecture and painting. Likewise he says "I think architects and planners should learn to paint, to carve, to cast, to work...
Something of Nivola's ever present sense of humor must have come into play the day he was watching his family make patterns with the sand on a Long Island beach. That was when he conceived the idea for his sand-sculpturing technique. Now his most important sculpture is made by modeling details in reverse patterns in wet sand and then filling these molds with concrete or plaster of paris. The result is a kind of bas-relief...
Above the Water. To depict the dramatic sinking of the Dorchester Nivola designed a huge 22-ft.-by-24-ft. hull of white, reinforced concrete, balanced it over a broad fountain basin which flows inward with a whirlpool motion to a small central oval. For the four 6-ft.-tall sandcast plaques, set just above the water to memorialize the four chaplains, Nivola also went back to an early inspiration, the semi-abstract holiday bread loaves made by Sardinian women. For his motifs Nivola picked four common aspirations: the clasped hands of prayer, conflict of good and evil, family unity...