YOUR GUIDE TO THE GIANSONE MUSEUM
«Sculpture is not a profession, it is a necessity of the spirit.»
Welcome to the Giansone Museum
Welcome to the beating heart of Mario Giansone's artistic universe. This space is not just an exhibition venue, but a sensory and emotional journey through matter. Here, marble, stone, wood, and iron lose their rigidity to become movement, sound, and soul. We wish you a wonderful exploration as you discover one of the most fascinating and profound secrets of twentieth-century art.
Who was Mario Giansone?
Mario Giansone (1915–1997) was a Torinese sculptor, painter, and teacher of extraordinary caliber and deep intellectual independence. Shy towards the commercial fashions of the art market, Giansone dedicated his entire life to the pursuit of pure form. A long-time professor at the Passoni Art Institute in Turin, he was an absolute master of direct carving (the act of sculpting the material without the aid of preliminary grid sketches or plaster models). His artistic production spans the exploration of dynamism, the reinterpretation of Cubism and Futurism, and a constant investigation into the drama and beauty of both the human and animal condition.
What the Museum Preserves
- Stone and Marble Sculptures: Works born from the subtraction of matter, where the void becomes as essential as the solid mass.
- Woodworks and Woodcuts: Masterpieces of carving and engraving executed on living, organic matter.
- Bronze Castings and Iron Works: Complex fabrications that challenge gravity and standard forms.
- Paintings, Tapestries, and Engravings: Testimonies to his technical versatility and his obsession with rhythm and music, especially jazz.
Guide to the Rooms and Exhibition Path
The itinerary unfolds through evocative settings where the industrial architecture enhances the visual power and three-dimensionality of the Master's works.
The Atrium: The Beginning of the Journey
The Atrium welcomes visitors by immediately introducing them to the theoretical and plastic cornerstones of Giansone's art, combining the monumentality of stone, dynamic experimentation, and his early youth research.
In the Center – Grande Madre (Great Mother): Dominating the central space of the atrium, this monumental work celebrates the ancestral concept of motherhood and fertility. Through generous, enveloping, and geometrically synthesized shapes, the sculpture expresses a sense of universal protection and primordial sacredness, where the female figure itself becomes the origin of the world and matter.
On the Left – Kinetic Works (Il Karma and L'Orma): On this side, the visitor encounters Giansone's experimentation related to movement. Il Karma (The Karma) and L'Orma (The Footprint) are sculptures conceived to dialogue with space and the observer's movement. Through ingenious structures and geometric interlocks, these works create an illusion of perpetual change, symbolizing the flow of time, human actions, and the indelible trace that man leaves in his passage.
On the Right – Early Works and Great Theories: This section documents the artist's first steps and the birth of his highly personal expressive language. Alongside early sculptures and drawings, the fundamental theory of tangents is presented—in which form is defined not by broken lines but by the meeting of ideal straight lines that graze the matter—and the modular theory, a geometric system where the entire work develops from the repetition and variation of a single mathematical and proportional "module".
Along the Atrium Path – Two Stone Works:
• L'Anima (The Soul): A sculpture of extraordinary delicacy in which stone, traditionally heavy and opaque, seems to dematerialize into pure spirituality and lightness, inviting deep reflection on human interiority.
• La lezione di anatomia (The Anatomy Lesson): A powerful work in which Giansone addresses the deconstruction of the human body. Far from being a simple educational representation, the sculpture dissects and recomposes shapes to lay bare the intrinsic geometric structure, celebrating the millimetric harmony of the biological machine.
1. Dark Room (Sala Buia)
A controlled-light environment of great emotional impact. In this room, light is not a simple utility element, but a true component of the sculpture: skillfully projected onto the works, it models the shapes, enhances the volumes, and gives expression to shadows, allowing the visitor to perceive the intimate essence of Giansone's thought.
2. Giuseppe Floridia Room
This room is dedicated to the memory of Beppe Floridia, a historic friend of the artist and a cornerstone of the Foundation. It is a dutiful tribute to the man who, along with his family, dedicated immense effort, passion, and material resources to the preservation, study, and enhancement of Giansone's legacy, making the very birth of this museum and the return of the Master's genius to the public possible.
Woodworks (I Legni): Wood represented a challenge and a dialogue with living matter for Giansone. Unlike stone or marble, wood has its own "voice" defined by grains, knots, and fibers. The Master, faithful to the principle of direct carving, never forced the material, but followed its growth and original structure. The shapes are smooth but retain the organic warmth of the raw material, creating a fascinating contrast with the colder and more monumental stone works.
Woodcuts (Le Xilografie): The art of engraving on wooden blocks, then printed on paper. In this collection, visitors can admire Giansone's extraordinary graphic skill. Here the artist works "by subtraction" even more sharply: every groove carved into the wood becomes a point of light (white) on the paper. His woodcuts are distinguished by a very violent chiaroscuro contrast and clean geometries that recall Cubism, condensing the themes of jazz music and labor into images of extraordinary synthetic power.
3. Bronze Room (The Jazz Symphony)
This space celebrates the vigor, rhythm, and complexity of cast matter, but it is above all the place where Giansone's visceral passion for jazz music visually resonates. For the Master, jazz was not a simple background, but a philosophy of life, a controlled improvisation that fit perfectly with his way of sculpting. The vast majority of the bronzes exhibited in this room are dedicated precisely to this universe: figures of saxofonists, double bass players, and drummers merge into one dynamic whole with their instruments. Giansone succeeds in making heavy metal lose gravity, translating the fluidity of notes, the syncopation of rhythm, and the energy of jam sessions into a three-dimensional weave of full and empty spaces.
4. Marble Room
Dedicated to "direct carving" on marble, granite, and hard stones. In this room, emotion arises from visual contact with the surface of the stone which preserves the marks of immediate "excavation" and the artist's manual labor, without the artificial smoothness of academic models. The shapes, despite their geometric synthesis, release a monumental and primordial force.
Among the absolute masterpieces kept in this space, visitors can admire iconic works such as La donna della Domenica (The Sunday Woman), the famous and sinuous profiles of i famosi gatti di Giansone (Giansone's famous cats), the intense passion expressed in Il bacio (The Kiss), and the extraordinary plastic translation of musical rhythm found in Modern Jazz Quartet.
5. Opera Omnia
The philosophical, conceptual heart and culmination of the entire exhibition path. This room houses the total synthesis of Mario Giansone's artistic and spiritual vision. An organic and spectacular core of works arranged according to a precise logical itinerary that narrates the evolution of his thought and his unceasing search for the hidden harmony in the universe, leading the visitor on a journey towards transcendence.
The History of the Museum and the Factory
The Ex-Factory: A Frame of Industrial Archaeology
The Giansone Museum stands within an extraordinary architectural framework: an old 20th-century textile factory (Ex Maglificio Fratelli Bosio). This building, once a symbol of working-class and manufacturing Turin, is a perfect example of industrial archaeology. The large windows, high ceilings, and iron structures that once housed looms and the coming and going of workers now offer natural light and a monumental breath that enhance the volumes and cuts of the sculptures.
The Birth of the Museum
The museum was born from the will of the Mario Giansone Foundation with the aim of not dispersing the artist's immense heritage and offering it a permanent home. The choice to regenerate an industrial space perfectly reflects the philosophy of the master: a place where manual work, fatigue, precision, and the transformation of raw material were at the center of daily life for decades, just as happened, day after day, in the sculptor's studio.
Goodbye and Have a Great Exploration!
Thank you for visiting the Giansone Museum and for sharing with us this extraordinary journey through art, matter, and memory. We hope that the visual power of the Master accompanies you even outside these walls. Our museum is just one of the many tiles that make up the wonderful mosaic of the Susa Valley. We invite you to continue your itinerary discovering the other wonders that this unique territory has to offer: from millenary paths of faith and history, like the majestic Sacra di San Michele and the Novalesa Abbey, to the breathtaking views of our natural parks and suggestive medieval villages.
Your opinion matters
Before leaving, we ask you a very small favor: to the left of the ticket office you will find a QR Code. Scan it with your smartphone to leave a comment, thought, or suggestion about your visit. Your words help us grow and share Mario Giansone's extraordinary legacy with an ever-larger audience.
