Cuaddu

Cuaddu – white marble 2016.

I’ve always been fascinated by human features, hence my stress on human faces in my works, but I’ve never realised how beautiful the horse head’s features are. I carved this piece after some weeks of intense studying of horse anatomy. I bought a veterinary anatomy book, I studied skull proportions and muscles position and this is what I got after this journey. Turns out that you just need to move a couple of muscles to change horse’s expression completely. It is true with human faces too, but horses have only 3-4 main expressions, so it’s kind of easier to remodel the head with just few changes. During my carving this horse changed from scared to angry, from relaxed to “ready to action”, like I would describe the final expression I gave to it.

The head is mounted on a black marble base to give maximum contrast with the white.

Regarding the name: cuaddu is the sardinian word for horse (comes from the latin equus) and horses have been highly regarded in Sardinia for centuries.