DREAMWOODS
SELVA DI SOGNO
TRAUMWALD
STONESCULPTURE PARK
Located in the heart of Tuscany, hidden in an extensive oak wood at 600 meters altitude, a magic forest awaits you. The originally German sculptor Deva Manfredo has been building a dream world made of stone for about 40 years. The Environmental Art labyrinth of about 10 hectares (20 acres) stretches itself between ca. 250 interventions among anthropomorphic figures emerging from earth, miniaturized temples and cities of old civilizations, majestic mandalas made of coloured stones, plays of stones with the bizarre trees shapes, stones laid to form colour twisted carpets.
The oeuvres, even imposing, are built with natural stones and other found materials assembled with the sole aid of the force of gravity. The park includes now also a Colourgarden and a Forest-Gallery of Paintings. The forest invites you to stop, to perceive yourself and nature following, if wished, a path of guided meditations, but also invites you to play with a workshop where everyone can experiment his own creativity. The artist invites visitors to silently cover the itinerary listening to the forest silences and the call of nature.
Take at least 2 hours of time for visit! Deva Manfredo’s creativity rises from meditation which is the base foundation of his work.
GALLERY
JUST ONE THING HAPPENS HERE
„I choose a most primitive form possible to do composition work… only not modified materials – only equilibrium and gravity – without glue and cement… I like to be with it more close possible to nature. I like little animals living in or under them. Mother Nature is the master (treated very badly by our civilization). I present her incredibly ancient treasures….
Man has to see and re-understand the nature – until the small things & beings.“
VOICES OVER THE PARK
Deva Manfredo’s stones are parts of an imposing mosaic that involves all dimensions of space, with symbolic figurations, mysterious paths, disturbing statues, palaces and fairy-tale temples, and finally even cities with complex architectural structures, where you can find courtyards, passages,towers and battlements, monumental gates…
It is significant to see how, in front of these landscapes, constantly abused categories such as ‘culture, sculpture, architecture, land art, archaeology, craftsmanship’, or simply ‘play’ or even ‘religion’ collapse: There is something before (or after?) art. And this is the most interesting and perhaps most disturbing aspect: you feel as if you were the first person to arrive on earth – at the origin of the world…
Anna Casserino da Como
It is not easy to express in words what we see before us, but our soul knows it exactly, our memory knows these forms, the most forgotten layer of our consciousness is immediately addressed,- the contact happens abruptly. We do not know exactly how and why, but we are enlightened by an immediate fascination. The message arrives immediately, beyond reason and control.