PAOLO PORTOGHESI (architect, director of the Biennale di Venezia and professor of architecture at the Roman University "La Sapienza") writes about Morosin in '99:
One of the characteristics that most clearly defines Italian art is the collaboration among "the drawing arts" and many of the monuments that have made our country famous throughout the world are the result of a fruitful collaboration among architects, sculptors and painters.
In spite of this, there have been very few examples of artistic integration in our century and those that do exist, date from the first half of the 1900s.
Therefore, we should greet with particular interest the imminent inauguration in Castelfranco Veneto of a spacious square in which some very large sculptures come into play, alongside some buildings of significant importance, not only to enrich and embellish the environment but to confer on it a role as protagonist.
The sculptures in question are three monumental horses, 5 metres high, which seem, at the same time, to be three gates open towards infinity. They are the work of Costantino Morosin, a sculptor from the Veneto who has Iived for many years in Calcata, a small medieval village outside Rome.
Designated by law to be torn down, it was saved by the enthusiasm of a group of intellectuals from the most disparate regions of Italy and Europe.
Morosin's art derives its inspiration from that direct relationship between man and nature which belongs to those peoples we call "primitive" and who, on closer observation, have shown themselves to be capable of teaching modern man a secret he has lost, namely, how to rediscover a relationship of alliance with nature.
Famous for having used in his sculptures volcanic tuffstone, one of the humbiest materials in the Italian building repertory, Morosin has now taken on travertine stone. In so doing, he is emulating the gestures of our ancestors who, in their megalithic constructions in Puglia, in Malta or at Stone Henge in England, used stones weighing tens of tons, a feat which would put present-day lifting technology to the test, since to move the Axurn obelisk situated in front of the F.A.O. in Rome, it will have to be cut into three pieces.
Nevertheless, Morosin managed to have cut from the Caucci quarry at Bagni di Tivoli a series of monoliths weighing 26 tons, probably beating many records, old and new. But - the most important thing - he also managed to use them in a convincing way. He has created a space that is both sculptural and architectural.
Unlike De Chirico's horses which wrap themselves dynamically in space, Morosin's are rooted in the ground and focus on the architectural stability of the image.
They evoke a space of institutions, of roots, of the city understood therefore as the immobile backdrop of man's "pulsating life" which unfolds within the city and which draws from this immobility the stimulus lto become, the thrust towards continuous metamorphosis.
Morosin's three horse-gateways symbolize past, present and future and we could interpret them as an invitation directed to modern man to think about how the present, with its innumerabie ways of unfolding, implies the ability to influence the future and therefore suggests the need for a plan.
The three horses, which ask to be "passed through", are the symbol of a road to be travelled; in their stability, they imply movement, flux; they invite contemplation but at the same time are an open challenge to the inactivity of our society, imprisoned by scepticism and bureaucracy.
PAOLO PORTOGHESI