Today we speak to Renzo Buttazzo a sculptor and designer who’s been experimenting with Lecce stone for 30 years, transforming this material with innovation and craftsmanship creating an unmistakable style.

I want to convey that sense of lightness and softness made up of full and empty spaces that are recognizable in my style completely disconnected from the constraints of productivity and industrialization and that I recognize the true essence of the work only in the operational manual skills. My creations are produced in limited series and can be reproduced in any dimension. I have been recognized over the years for having given a new face to the piece of furniture. My works range from sculptures to luminous bodies, from furniture to sculptural walls, helping to improve the possibilities of use of this material and there are numerous acknowledgments and collaborations in Italy and abroad that have helped to define me as one of the artists most innovative in the field of stone materials processing, I currently collaborate with architects, gallery owners and interior-designers, creating works that furnish charming homes and resorts of collectors all over the world.

Your greatest inspirations or influences?

My style has been strongly influenced by the place where I live in Salento, a thousand-year-old land characterized by Lecce Baroque and a disruptive nature between sky and sea. Olive tree, coral sand, indented coasts and a particular light have always been the elements that have always nourished my creativity, on the other hand, only in nature can we perceive the beauty of the world in which we live.

How are the current trends in technology and innovation affecting your work as an artist?

I come from a world where the fax was the best way to communicate with a gallery owner or store - now I find myself on facetime with a client in NY making a direct commission. Technology however can also distance us from that manual ability that has characterized our history where in the work we perceive the animates the spirit and love of those who had created it through a process of dedication, shrewdness, precision perceptible to the human eye and which makes the work truly unique in contrast to the 3D one that creates the work without margins of errors. In my work it is precisely the imprecision and the margin of error that makes the work unique.

Tell us about your creative process please.

Everything starts from a vision and above all from a philosophy.

Organic forms can undergo unthinkable changes hence a variety of immense stylistic choices. It is necessary to empty the mind absolutely not to look at what other creatives are doing and to look inside oneself to let the creative space of our mind be free from any trend and it is only then in the absolute emptiness you will find the essence of creation.

What do you think about the art world?

Art is an extraordinary reality in continuous evolution and totally free to interpret the fundamental contemporaneity for the human being who needs to nourish his soul with beauty and culture concepts that help us to improve the vision of life. Its use has deteriorated over the years due to pseudo gallery owners who, taking advantage, through the web, of a variety of pseudo artists, made them believe that through the contests they would come out of anonymity and become someone. aspirations and dreams of ordinary people with the desire to make art. I think that the world of art has become so commercialized that it has lost that magic of discovery by the gallery owners of the evolved and capable artist so much that it has included it in that well-deserved market niche. The artist is a witness to the contemporary living with the aim of feeding the minds of the future.

Anything coming up we should know about Renzo?

I am currently working to create very large outdoor works.

Thank you for joining us today Renzo, anything else you would like to share with our audience?

I would like to address the new generations and invite them not to look at what has already been done but what you can do looking to the future and above all not to be subjugated by what others think ... feel free. You are the future and you have the duty and the conscience to make it better because we believe in you.