
Willy Verginer, "Una Storia Vera (girl)"
Bronze, gold leaf
27.50" x 22" x 25.5"
Willy Verginer, "La Notte di San Lorenzo"
Bronze and gold leaf
53" x 31.50" x 12"
Willy Verginer "Il Gioco Infinito"
Bronze and acrylic
83" x 27" x 31"
Willy Verginer, "Moongirl"
Bronze and acrylic
18" x 13" x 11"
Willy Verginer "Una Storia Vera" SOLD OUT
Bronze, gold leaf
27" x 23" x 25"
Willy Verginer, "Sungirl" SOLD
Bronze and acrylic
18" x 13" x 11"
Willy Verginer "White Box" SOLD
Lindenwood, acrylic and iron
59" x 25.5" x 26.75"
Willy Verginer, "Il Gioco Infinito" SOLD
Lindenwood and acrylic
84.5" x 28.5" x 32.5"
Willy Verginer, "Gioco di Testa" SOLD
Lindenwood and acrylic
44" x 12" x 12"
Willy Verginer, "Le Nuvole in Affitto" SOLD
Lindenwood and acrylic
67.75" x 16.5" x 15"
Willy Verginer "Quello che io non ho è una camicia bianca" SOLD
Lindenwood and acrylic
105" x 66" x 28"
Willy Verginer, "It Isn't a Game" SOLD
Lindenwood and acrylic
63" x 38" x 20"
Willy Verginer, "Moongirl" SOLD
Lindenwood and acrylic
58.25" x 15.5" x 15.5"
Willy Verginer "The Boy and The Sea" SOLD
Bronze, acrylic
24" x 11" x 7"
Willy Verginer "Dentro Il Riflesso" SOLD
Lindenwood and acrylic
47" x 35" x 14"
Willy Verginer, "Where Has the Stockbroker Gone" SOLD
Lindenwood, acrylic and aluminium leaf
52" x 13.8" x 17"
Willy Verginer "Chimica del Pensiero - White" SOLD
Bronze, acrylic
22" x 6" x 5,5"
Willy Verginer, "Shine on Me" SOLD
Lindenwood, acrylic and gold leaf
47.25" x 15" x 11.5"
Willy Verginer "Chimica del Pensiero - Gold" SOLD
Bronze, gold leaf
22" x 6" x 5,5"
Willy Verginer "Acqua Alta Figure 9" SOLD
Lindenwood and acrylic
79" x 23" x 18"
Willy Verginer "La Testa Nel Oro" SOLD
Lindenwood and acrylic
38.5" x 16" x 11
Willy Verginer "Five Past Twelve" SOLD
Lindenwood, acrylic, aluminum leaf & iron
23" x 58" x 21"
Willy Verginer "Palvaz" SOLD
Lindenwood and acrylic
37" x 27.5" x 18.5"
Willy Verginer " Acqua Alta Figure 2 " SOLD
Lindenwood and acrylic
35" x 12" x 8"
Willy Verginer "La Velocità Dell' Agnello" SOLD
Lindenwood and acrylic
37" x 35" x 11"
Willy Verginer "Rootless" SOLD
Lindenwood and acrylic
86" x 18" x 11"
Willy Verginer "I Pensieri Non Fanno Rumore" SOLD
Mixed woods, acrylic and gold leaf
60" x 39" x 32"
Willy Verginer "The Boy and the See" SOLD
Lindenwood and acrylic
76" x 27" x 20"
Willy Verginer "Our head is round in order to enable our thoughts to change direction" SOLD
Applewood and acrylic
26" x 16" x 16"
Willy Verginer "On the other side" SOLD
Lindenwood and acrylic
35" x 9" x 8"
Willy Verginer "Verde paradiso" SOLD
Lindenwood, acrylic and aluminium leaf
27" x 19" x 8"
Willy Verginer "Donkey Barrel" SOLD
Lindenwood and acrylic
28" x 27" x 11"
Willy Verginer "Cecità voluta" SOLD
Lindenwood, acrylic and gold leaf
25" x 33"
Willy Verginer "Occhi Rossi" SOLD
Lindenwood and acrylic
30" x 16" x 9"
Willy Verginer "La peau du vent" SOLD
Lindenwood and acrylic
37" x 9" x 8"
Willy Verginer "Non credo a Superman" SOLD
Lindenwood and acrylic
35" x 9" x 8"
Willy Verginer "Shine on Me" SOLD
Lindenwood, acrylic and gold leaf
75" x 14" x 12"
Willy Verginer "Da ramo a ramo" SOLD
Lindenwood, acrylic and brass
61" x 41" x 16"
Willy Verginer "Symmetrical Nature" SOLD
Lindenwood and acrylic
9" x 8" x 37"
Willy Verginer "La pel dl vënt" SOLD
Lindenwood and acrylic
68" x 12" x 12"
Willy Verginer "On the Road" SOLD
Lindenwood and acrylic
51" x 32" x 9"
Willy Verginer "Where Has the Stockbroker Gone?" SOLD
Lindenwood, acrylic and gold leaf
51" x 12" x 16"
Willy Verginer "Ciüria de foies" SOLD
Lindenwood and acrylic
55" x 18"
Willy Verginer "The Dark Side of the Bull" SOLD
Lindenwood and acrylic
Willy Verginer "Ma l'aria per fortuna è fresca" SOLD
Lindenwood and acrylic
Willy Verginer "Komm lieber Mai und mache..." SOLD
Lindenwood and acrylic
Willy Verginer "Spring Slippers" SOLD
Lindenwood and acrylic
Willy Verginer was raised in the Val Gardena region in Italy, surrounded by the summits, forests and the Dolomite Mountains which became an important influence in his work. As a teenager, he began his fine arts education in painting and studied at the Institute of Secondary Art Education in Ortisei in Italy. However, his gravitation toward woodwork and sculpture would lead him to seek training in the latter discipline. While in school, he enhanced his education by frequenting the studios of many sculptors in Val Gardena, renowned for its woodworking traditions since the eighteenth century. Although he successfully assimilated the artisanal and ancestral traditions of polychrome sculpture and integrated the traditional vocabulary of the profession, his ambitions proved to be more vast, universal and contemporary.
The technical processes adopted by Willy Verginer offer insights into his approach, which is at once figurative and conceptual. His sculptures are composed of several blocks of wood, which are dried naturally over six years to avoid morphing. He conceives, from these large masses, the forms of his sculptures with the help of a chainsaw and a hatchet before refining his work with chisels and small tools to work the eyelids or the earlobes of his figures. Despite their hyperrealist modeling, the resulting figures are devoid of facial expression; with their fixed gaze and apparent detachment, they are party to the mystery of representation, and establishing, especially in recent works, a compelling rapport with the absurd.
His series Human Nature, which bears the mark of environmentalist discourse, offers compositions that depict the industrial impacts on living things and their habitats. In this vein, Willy Verginer juxtaposes oil drums, wild animals and clear-cut forests in his sculptures. By reducing the theme of the forest to a single tree, he bears witness to the fragility of ecosystems and urges the viewer to protect them from the noxious effects of polluting industries. The grey or metallic sheen of the barrels spread across different elements of the sculptural compositions: an act of aggression representing pollution and the degradation of humanity. By employing the fragility and beauty of nature in an ironic and humoristic manner, Willy Verginer forces us to question the impacts of our daily actions.
Willy Verginer’s work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions across Europe, notably at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Lissone and at the Cavalese Contemporary Art Center in Trentino, both in Italy. His works are also found in many private collections in Europe, the United States, and Canada.
Willy Verginer is part of a group exhibition in Zheijang Art Museum presented with the collaboration of the Italian Cultural Institute of Shanghai and entitled “Gazing of Tranquility” from January st, to February 20th, 2022.
Alongside 7 other artists, this exhibition features major expressions of Italian contemporary art. These works are linked to Val Gardena, the South Tyrolean cradle of Ladin culture, and their common denominator is wood, a material used to give substance to archetypal human representations, signs of a perpetually violated sacredness of nature.
The exhibition was also conceived in the name of the ancient bond between Italy and China, a connection rich in exchanges of ideas, knowledge and material goods, which dates back to the third century BC, when the Silk Road began to connect West and East.
ARTICLE IN FRENCH | Plongez dans l’univers de l’artiste italien Willy Verginer alors qu’il présente sa plus récente série de sculptures de bois hyperréalistes à la Galerie LeRoyer du Vieux-Montréal. Les questions écologiques et environnementales sont au cœur de l’oeuvre de Verginer, qui vit et travaille à Val Gardena dans le nord de l’Italie, vallée célèbre pour sa station de ski, son parc naturel et… ses sculptures sur bois. Pas étonnant, donc, de constater que ses sculptures grandeur nature abordent l’étroite relation qui unit l’homme et son environnement.
IN FRENCH | La technique de travail adoptée par Willy Verginer est révélatrice de son approche à la fois figurative et conceptuelle. Ses sculptures sont composées d’une masse de plusieurs blocs de bois, séchés naturellement pendant 6 ans afin d’éviter que le bois ne se transforme. De ces masses grossières, il fait naître les formes de sa sculpture à l’aide d’une scie à chaîne et d’une hache, avant de raffiner son travail à l’aide de ciseaux à bois, jusqu’à utiliser de tous petits outils pour travailler les paupières ou lobes d’oreille de ses figures.
Willy Verginer'sculptures are currently featured in the exhibition "Nature in Art" at the Mocak Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow until the end of September. This exhibition shows contemporary works of more than 70 artists from many countries, in techniques ranging from painting, photography and video to object and installation
Yes, you're right: these surreal sculptures do look like they've been carved from stone or moulded from some kind of plaster. But incredibly, they've all been sculpted from wood alone. They're the creation of Willy Verginer, a 60-year-old Italian artist who lives and works in Ortisei BZ, South Tyrol, and whose works are located in numerous private and public collections, both Italian and international.
Willy Verginer is nowadays considered one of the leaders of magic realism. His distinctive style has garnered him much attention, and his works have been exhibited around the globe. Simultaneously lifelike and whimsical, Verginer’s wooden sculptures are dipped in bold colours and patterns, lending a touch of surrealism to what is initially figurative. Worked in the round in full relief, the sculptures rise up from their mass and material weight into their surrounding space. Verginer’s sharp and at times embattled handling of the wood manifests something altogether new from a rather ancient material and art form. Willy Verginer doesn’t make statues; rather, he creates images in action.
Italian artist Willy Verginer depicts our evolving relationship with nature in these adolescent sculptures.
Willy Verginer's half-dipped, wooden sculptures create a visual contrast that highlight environmental issues at the hands of human manifest destiny. Verginer's work plays off human innocence and the ensuing corruption, while examining our effects on nature at the hands of moral shortfalls. Verginer sculpts his pieces using locally grown wood, while finishing with a strategic placement of paint. By using a dark color like black paint, the artist shows depictions of environmental destruction as objects like oil begin to encroach on a beautiful but tragically unaware deer.
ARTICLE IN FRENCH | Connais-tu la légende des « âmes scellées » ? Le célèbre récit né au cœur des imposantesmontagnes des Dolomites, en Italie. L’histoire relate comment Mère nature a mené au tombeau des Hommes en les emprisonnant dans des essences d’arbres suite à leurs méfaits à son égard.
Beaucoup ont émis des doutes sur ce récit, jugé trop absurde. Et les années ne feraient que renforcer cette idée. Cependant, un évènement est venu bouleverser les esprits et contrarier les plus sceptiques. La découverte de ces fameuses âmes.
Italian sculptor Willy Verginer (previously) creates figurative sculptures from wood, pieces that allow his carving skills to stand out with minimal additions of monochrome bands of paint. The oranges, greens, and blues he adds places his subjects into unseen environments, like his sculpture of a small child who appears to swim through detritus covered in dark blue paint. Other sculptures also point towards environmental decay, such as a figure that clutches a leaking gas can, and a stag that is altered by the oil canisters that serves as its base.
Verginer’s astonishing wood carvings were the jumping-off point for this exhibition. The Italian artist comes from Ortisei in South Tyrol, Italy — a small village that’s known internationally for its centuries-old trade of religious wood carvings. This art has been passed down through families and generations, and Verginer represents a new school, diverging from the traditional religious motifs to apply the trade to fine art sculpture. Yet the roots of the work are clear: there’s something both narrative and didactic about his carved tableaux, to say nothing of their painstaking detail and execution.
ARTICLE IN FRENCH | S'il y avait "buzz" ou "feed" dans le nom de notre beau magazine (hem...), on aurait pu intituler cet article : "ce qu'il fait avec une tronçonneuse va vous étonner." En effet, Willy Verginer travaille tout d'abord à la tronçonneuse (avant de passer à la finition au burin) pour réaliser ces sculptures extraordinairement fines qui s'avèrent exclusivement constituées... de bois. Né en 1957, cet artiste italien a eu l'occasion de se faire un beau petit nom dans le monde de l'Art, puisque ces dernières années, ses oeuvres ont été exposées dans le monde entier (et notamment à la 54ème Biennale d'Art contemporain de Venise).
Italian sculptor Willy Verginer carves ultra-realistic characters in human dimensions out of wood. With remarkable precision and attention to details, he showcases ordinary individuals sometimes combined with significant objects or animals. The oranges, greens and blues he adds places his subjects into unseen environments.
[ARTICLE EN ANGLAIS] Stumbling upon the work of Italian sculptor Willy Verginer can only dazzle. Born in 1957, the artist carves his masterpieces out of lime tree wood and covers them with detail-less tint areas of acrylic paint and gold.
His statues can be isolated, or gathered in groups, depending of the mood of their creator. They are young women and men, still children and teenagers, extracting themselves from a coating of flowers, like buds of humanity ready to blossom. The Italian expression used to name this series is ‘a fior di pelle’, describing hyper sensitivity and translated verbatim means: ‘to flower of skin’, a very poetic meaning to express the fragility of the youth and the ability to dream.