Genesis

The sculpture “Genesis” (1968) by the Italian sculptor Giancarlo Sangregorio has stood since 1979 on the lawn in front of the restored Göttingen Amtshaus (magistrate’s building). The city of Göttingen acquired the work in 1979 from an exhibition held on the occasion of the opening of the New Town Hall. Sangregorio, a student of Marino Marini in the 1940s, calls his works “Incastri” (interlockings or joinings): he deliberately combines different materials—primarily various types of stone—using visible dovetailing, cuts, protrusions, and plug-in connections, much like a carpenter. The Göttingen piece consists of three strongly contrasting stones: olive-green, relatively soft serpentine with white marbling, hard granite, and uniformly black diorite. The differences in material and colour remain clearly visible and define the sculpture’s distinctive character. n this way Sangregorio follows an independent path between constructive and modelling sculpture, deliberately breaking with the traditional ideal of a homogeneous, unified work of art.