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• "In the Shadow of the Alps"

«...Was fasziniert besonders am Werkstoff Marmor? ...man muss ihn ­bezwingen, den Stein, die Härte.
Es ist also genau der mittlere Härtegrad, den ich brauche, um meine ­schönen runden Formen herauszumeisseln...»

Favourite material: marble
The Krastal valley lies to the north of the Austrian town of Villach. The valley is famous for its marble, the quality of which – so say the experts – is more than a match for the better-known Carrara stone. It is therefore no wonder that artists from all over the world, among them the Carinthian sculptor, painter and graphic artist Max Gangl, come here to create sculptures. Max Gangl has in fact turned the Krastal valley into a major artistic centre. The apple is Gangl’s current artistic object of preference, the form of which is for him a symbol of the planet earth.

All the works that Gangl has created from stone have one thing in common: they are sculpted, directly and intuitively, from their natural state, without the aid of prelimi­nary sketches.
What does he find so fascinating about marble as a working material?
“First off, there’s the fact that you have to submit the stone and its hardness to your will. Although marble cannot in fact be regarded as a very hard material – in contrast to granite, it is relatively soft, and sandstone is of course softer still. This puts marble right in the middle in terms of hardness, which is just what I need to chisel out my beautiful, rounded forms. And I have to say – after looking at marble from all the quarries in the Mediterranean area – that the stone we have here is one of the most exquisite varieties there is.”
Dr. Günther Ziesel, ORF Kärnten, Austria