Piancastagnaio ( Siena) is hosting a new public art installation featuring five bronze sculptures by Davide Rivalta near the Rocca Aldobrandesca. The installation, titled WILD, will be on view from May 30 to December 31, 2026, and is curated by Antonella Nicola in collaboration with Mirco Marino. The official opening is scheduled for Sunday, June 21, 2026, at 4:00 p.m.
The works depict wolves, a recurring motif in the work of the Bolognese artist (Bologna, 1974), who is among the most recognized names on the international scene of monumental sculpture and contemporary public art. For years, Rivalta has focused his work on the animal figure, treating it as an autonomous physical presence capable of establishing a direct relationship with the space that hosts it. From this perspective, the animal intervenes in the context, questions it, and alters its perception.
The installation of these works also coincides with a period of particular international visibility for the artist. Starting April 21, 2026, Rivalta will be featured in Stockholm with the project *Blowing Figures into Space*, which places thirteen bronze animal sculptures throughout the urban space of the Swedish capital. The initiative is sponsored by the “C.M. Lerici” Italian Cultural Institute and the Italian Embassy in Sweden, with the support of the Swedish Royal Court and the City of Stockholm, and will remain on view through August 31, 2027. At the same time, the artist is presenting a solo exhibition in Riyadh, at Al Nafal Park, titled “Mergining Landscapes,” curated by Omar Al Braik. In 2019, two of his sculptures depicting lions were placed on permanent display at the Quirinale Palace in Rome. Over the years, his public art installations have been featured in various international cities, including Antibes, Neuchâtel, Gstaad, and Mougins, in addition to his most recent open-air projects in Riyadh and Stockholm.
On the occasion of the opening on June 21, in addition to the presentation of the WILD installation, a comprehensive program is planned that also includes the presentation of the exhibition catalog *Osservatorio: Mormorii*, hosted at the Rocca Aldobrandesca. The volume documents the exhibition’s itinerary and the works created by the artists involved in the project. On the same day, the banners created by the artists featured in the exhibition will be presented to the Contrade of Piancastagnaio—a gesture intended to connect contemporary artistic production to the town’s collective memory and traditions.
The “Osservatorio: Mormorii” project, curated by Mirco Marino in collaboration with Antonella Nicola, has been extended until August 31 and brings together works by Francesca Banchelli, Francesco Carone, Rä di Martino, and Namsal Siedlecki. The project stems from a dialogue with the four districts of Piancastagnaio—Castello, Borgo, Coro, and Voltaia—each of which represents a specific historical and social identity of the area. Each artist was asked to design a banner inspired by one of the districts, reinterpreting the tradition of medieval banners. The banners, created based on the artists’ designs and intended to remain the property of the Municipality of Piancastagnaio, will be presented to the public on June 21 in the presence of representatives from the four districts. The fabrics were supplied by Gori Tessuti srl of Calenzano, while the banners were sewn by Bottega Toscana of Piancastagnaio.
“Davide Rivalta, a native of Bologna born in 1974, has built much of his body of work around animals: rhinos, buffalo, lionesses, gorillas, and wolves,” says Pierluigi Piccini, Piancastagnaio’s Councilor for Culture. “Beasts modeled in the studio and cast in bronze, deliberately left unfinished—the surface retaining the imprint of the fingers in the clay, the tears, the material still alive. But the heart of his artistic vision is not the form: it is the placement. His animals never stand on a base. No pedestal, no barrier that says, ‘This is art; look at it from a distance.’ They stand on the ground, where we walk. We don’t look at them; we encounter them. […] The French philosopher Baptiste Morizot, who has written beautifully about wolves, calls it “diplomacy with the living”: sharing a territory with those who are not like us without necessarily having to domesticate or eliminate them. Donna Haraway, on the other side of the ocean, would speak of “companion species”—species that become what they are only through their mutual relationship. That is precisely what these wolves embody: not the animal against us, not in our place, but alongside us, in the same countryside, under the same trees.”
“Davide Rivalta’s wolves arrive in Piancastagnaio: these are five life-size wolf sculptures that the artist has installed in the heart of the village, sparking a dialogue between contemporary art, the landscape, and the identity of the territory,” says Antonella Nicola, organizer, cultural producer, and curator of the DAVIDE RIVALTA.WILD project. “The installation is set within a context of extraordinary cultural and environmental richness: Piancastagnaio—with its evocative fortress, the Palazzo Bourbon del Monte, the historic village, and its precious springs—lies on the edge of the forest, between civilization and nature, between human history and the geography of Mount Amiata. It is not difficult, then, to find oneself face to face with the forces of nature and the wild. The wild is not merely what lives outside the city or on the outskirts of town. It is a dimension that continues to dwell within us, in places, and in culture: a deep memory of primal relationships, rooted in the unconscious, that persists beneath the surface of contemporary life. Davide Rivalta’s wolves make this hidden presence visible, but they do not portray it as a threat; rather, they trigger an encounter with what we have gradually distanced from ourselves. The wild does not come from outside, but resurfaces from a dimension that is always present. Davide Rivalta’s animals are living presences, bearers of a strength and energy that does not run out but is renewed each time through the encounter.”
“The wolves that Davide Rivalta has installed just outside the Rocca di Piancastagnaio have followed an instinct,” states Mirco Marino, curator of the exhibition *Osservatorio: Mormorii*. “In that tranquility—which can exist only as a negation of ferocity—lies an instinctuality that is as much internal as it is external to the work. Here they are, approaching the village, the mundane places, where human life was created by erecting barriers against the animal realm. And yet, quite naturally, they have arrived.”
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| In Piancastagnaio (Siena), Davide Rivalta’s wolves call the Rocca Aldobrandesca home |
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