Ugo Guidi, the works across the town

THE OXEN
piazza Garibaldi/via Montauti

In 1975, at the height of his artistic maturity, Ugo Guidi created a small terracotta pair of oxen as a tribute to his homeland and to the arduous labor of marble quarrying in the Versilian mountains. In 2012, on the centenary of Guidi’s birth, the Municipality of Forte dei Marmi commissioned a near life-size marble reproduction of the work to honor the Maestro’s bond with his territory and with the noble material he had shaped with skill and wisdom throughout his life.

The oxen, exhausted by their effort, are sculpted as a single body, in which energy and strength merge into lines and masses of powerful plastic intensity. Guidi portrays them at the moment of maximum tension, straining to pull a block of marble, evoking the age-old tradition of transporting stone from the mountains to the plain. This transport shaped over time what is now known as “Via di Michelangelo,” which still crosses the town center. It is along this “Via”, this route, beside the Fortino Leopoldo I, that “The Oxen” now rest, gazing toward the sea and the former loading pier – “… themselves part of the history of Forte dei Marmi…”

TECHNICAL DETAILS

• Title: “The Oxen” – (reproduction)
• Year: reproduced in 2012 at the Massimo Galleni Artistic Workshop, Pietrasanta; carved from a single marble block donated by the Henraux company (Querceta)
• Location: Piazza Garibaldi / Via Montauti, Forte dei Marmi
• Material: Marble (Cervaiole quarries)
• Dimensions: 150 cm (h) x 246 cm (w) x 125 cm (d), without base
• Base: 20 cm (h) x 230 cm (w) x 130 cm (d)

HORSE AND RIDER
Roundabout at Via Giovan Battista Vico/Via Lorenzo Giglioli

Ugo Guidi’s early training took place at the Pietrasanta Art Institute and later at the Academy of Fine Arts in Carrara, where he studied under Arturo Dazzi and graduated in 1936. Until the early 1940s, Guidi depicted reality just enough, as he said, “for proper education,” before turning toward more archaic and primitive forms. This led him to work with materials such as the tuff stone of Porta, terracotta, and certain Apuan marbles – materials deeply tied to his traditions and fully aligned with his concept of sculpture. These became the ancient matter the Maestro continuously shaped throughout his artistic journey, culminating in 1974 with the “Horse and Rider” sculpture, one of the most significant periods of his creative output. In this work, horse and man merge into simplified, sharp-edged lines, expressing a close bond between human and animal. The apparent stillness is broken by the horse’s step and the movement of its head, imparting motion and hope to a “modern centaur.” Installed in 2021 in the roundabout at Via Giovan Battista Vico, at the town entrance for those arriving from the highway, the sculpture pays homage to a sculptor who made Forte dei Marmi his home and stands as a symbolic figure of welcome and hospitality for visitors arriving in Forte.

TECHNICAL DETAILS

• Title: “Horse and Rider”
• Year: 1974, carved by Ugo Guidi at the Sem Sculpture Workshop, Pietrasanta
• Location: Roundabout Via Giovan Battista Vico / Via Lorenzo Giglioli, Forte dei Marmi
• Material: Roman travertine
• Dimensions: 170 cm (h) x 200 cm (w) x 58 cm (d), without base
• Base: 100 cm (h) x 140 cm (w) x 70 cm (d)

THE GOALKEEPER
Municipal Stadium Necchi-Balloni, Via XX Settembre

The Goalkeeper (1969) was executed by Guidi at the “Sem Workshop” in Pietrasanta. Carved in Roman travertine, it is one of the Maestro’s few monumental sculptures and derives from a smaller 1963 version in tuff (37 cm (h) x 44 cm (w) x 18 cm (d)). Commissioned and funded by Guido Balloni, then president of the Forte dei Marmi Sports Union, it was placed at the stadium entrance. When the stadium was later named “Necchi-Balloni,” the sculpture was donated to the Municipality of Forte dei Marmi, becoming a monument of hospitality that unites sport and art.

SPORT: strength, confidence, energy

The subject depicts a football goalkeeper in the act of diving to make a save. Clean, decisive lines guide the movement of a synthesized body. The athlete’s leap contrasts with the power of his arms pulling the ball down, almost defying gravity; were it not for one knee touching the ground, he would seem suspended between earth and sky. As Alessandra Frosini wrote of Guidi: “…an essential poetic language, made of sharp-edged volumes that inhabit space and create the figure through subtraction...”

Here, Guidi encapsulates the spirit of sport, made of sacrifice, respect for the opponent, and a sense of community.

A bronze replica of The Goalkeeper, now housed in the Forte dei Marmi Town Hall, was created as the prize for the winner of the UEFA European Amateur Championship Final Tournament held at the Forte dei Marmi Stadium in May 1970.

In 2006, following Italy’s victory at the Football World Cup, the Municipality of Forte dei Marmi presented Marcello Lippi with a bronze, gold, and silver reproduction of Ugo Guidi’s Goalkeeper, bearing a commemorative plaque dated September 3, 2006, with the following words:

Municipality of Forte dei Marmi
Forte dei Marmi Sports Award
To Marcello Lippi, who, with his professionalism,
Skill and determination
Led the Italian national team to a world triumph

TECHNICAL DETAILS

• Title: “The Goalkeeper”
• Year: 1969
• Location: Municipal Stadium Necchi-Balloni, Via XX Settembre
• Material: Roman travertine
• Dimensions: 250 cm (h) x 400 cm (w) x 200 cm (d), without base
• Base: 140 cm (h) x 200 cm (w) x 112 cm (d)

FEMALE FIGURE IN AN ENVIRONMENT
Istituto Comprensivo “Ugo Guidi” (K-14 school), Via P.I. da Carrara, Vittoria Apuana

The original work, a terracotta from 1966, belongs to a significant phase in Guidi’s career, marked by female figures with pure, sometimes soft lines. The loss of his father during World War I strengthened his bond with his mother. In 1941, he married Giuliana Iacometti, with whom he had two sons, Vittorio, born in 1944, and Fabrizio, born in 1952. Marriage and fatherhood profoundly influenced his art, making Woman and Maternity recurring themes throughout his career.

In 1983, when the new middle school in Via P.I. da Carrara was named after Ugo Guidi, the Municipality of Forte dei Marmi commissioned a large-scale reproduction of this work – Female Figure in an Environment – in Iranian travertine, a material that reminded the Maestro of the beloved Versilian tuff. The statue, fully symbolizing the continuity of life through mutual respect and cultural education, rises vertically like a totem, embodying the feminine, intended as femininity in its immutable essence.

Placed at the school entrance, the sculpture greets young students each day, opening up to them in a tangible way, with the semicircular base also serving as a welcoming seat.

In 2012, on the centenary of Guidi’s birth, the school and the artist’s family created a project in which pupils, just like sculptors, modeled and decorated ceramic hands arranged around the monument in an “ideal embrace to Ugo Guidi.” The work interacts with its surroundings and opens to the ever-unfolding flow of life, “…that becoming which always runs through the Art of this Artist...”

TECHNICAL DETAILS

• Title: “Female Figure in an Environment”
• Year: 1983 (reproduced from a 1966 terracotta original)
• Location: Istituto Comprensivo (K-14 school) “Ugo Guidi,” Via P.I. da Carrara, Forte dei Marmi
• Material: Iranian travertine
• Dimensions: 320 cm (h) x 240 x 210 x 205 cm