In the 1960s Gabriella Crespi was one of the few Europeans that was allowed to visit China and bring to Italy works of art such as paintings, ceramics and root woods that she presented in her showrooms in Rome and Milan. She used root woods as complement for her pieces of furniture. This action, which is simple at a first glance, has multiple meanings: first of all Gabriella underlines an aesthetic contrast between the simple lines of her works and the “baroque” curves of the roots. Second, she develops an additional contrast between the “rigour” of the metals used for her sculpture-tables and the warmth of the wood.
Gabriella also introduced a change in taste: she crushes, let me say so, Dresden ceramics, focusing on these meditation sculptures that have always been the cornerstone of the Chinese scholar’s studio. In Chinese culture, these works are equivalent to Yantras spontaneously produced by nature.
Eventually she offered a spiritual message, giving birth in a new form, through her artistic vision, to an inanimated piece of wood; in this way she talks about rebirth, life after death.
