"The sculpture of Achille Guzzardella is born from the drills of a clearly humanistic tradition. His regard for the quality of sensitive form or for the light that moulds adds psychological emphasis to the sensitive modulation of clay which does not need any extravagant solutions.The nature of Man's objects is respected and enhanced by a constant research of a neat relationship between te sculprural image and the psychological, penetrating and sharp image. The image acquires an intensity of its own, a definition of character due to careful observation, to sensitive care which respects the figure and exalts the values of the interpretation of character. His portraits are genuine, vital, the expression of an artist, not inert models…".
Aligi Sassu, "Achille Guzzardella, 12 Portraits", quoted on page 5 and 26. "Achille Guzzardella, Twenty years of sculpture", Milan, E.L.S.A., 1995 Page 39. "Achille Guzzardella. REPERTI", Municipality of Milan, Museo Archeologico, 1997, page 38. sal submission, it is the justified pride o"… Achille Guzzardella crowds his store with a host of bold inventions. His imagined persons, modelled from nothing, are by the hundred. In each of them the artist can easily remember the figurative torture expressed by pure fancy: those seemingly dull eyes, that wavy hair, the neck lined -- strictly in accordance with anatomys rigour -- with stern muscles (the sternocleidomastoid of certain imagined portraits).
Jodi, the child, of 1978, perhaps the first creature taken from the void of molecules, still chaotically searching for their infinite neighbours. Cover the caption, and you immediately call out the name of Manzù. Then you see Elena's faint smile, and you exclaim the name of Marino. This adherence to the classics is no banal submission, it is the justified pride of a technical skill, with triumph looming in the future".
G. Brera, "Achille Guzzardella, 12 Portraits", pages 52-53. "Achille Guzzardella. REPERTI", Municipality of Milan, Museo Archeologico, 1997, page 38.
"So it seems that in a critical examination of our sculptor's production we must carefully consider to what extent an adjustment between the truth of portrait-painting and formal quality has been reached in the progression from one work to the next. However, we must acknowledge that starting from the portrait of his mother and the first heads of children, he soon learned to turn out, from 1983 onwards, incisive examples of his vocation for portrait-painting, proving that beyond his innate gifts and a solid craftsmanship, which make it possible for him to master different materials -- from bronze to marble to terra-cotta or wax -- he has reached a deeper consciousness of his own means; and the case of the penetrating and well-constructed portraits of the psychologist Marco Marchesan and of he actor Mario Scaccia are further proof of his development.
Thus you cannot forget the grave and thoughtful features of Carlo Bo, the gothic, tortured face of Gianni Dova and that of Aligi Sassu, where the sympathy for the model is matched with an open-mindnesses of analysis that seems remotely akin to precedents in antique Roman sculptures…"
Gian Alberto Dell'Acqua, "Achille Guzzardella, 20 Portraits and Environs", Pinerolo, 1995, page 7. "Achille Guzzardella. REPERTI", Municipality of Milan, Museo Archeologico, 1997, page 38.
"… In other words, one is born as a sculptor. Which means, one is born with the overwhelming impulse to give his own imagination a three-dimensional dimension, a structure having its own plastic evidence in space. With an artist, these bents are immediately detected: they are part of his nature.
Then, of course, it is a question of judging results, but yours soon were such as to gurantee a firm sense of expression.
You are raising many questions, and it is right for everyone to answer them on his own. Yours is, then, a bold defence of the image as an exclusive moment of communication. Without the image, in fact, communication is impossible: this is the concept you want to confirm. Thus your point is always clear, you are recoiling from the enigmas of abstaction. It is already difficult to interpret images, why complicate them even more?…"
Mario De Micheli, "Achille Guzzardella, Twenty years of sculpture", quoted on pages 7 and 9. "Achille Guzzardella. REPERTI", Municipality of Milan, Museo Archeologico, 1997, page 39.
While he was carving my portrait, I was under the impression that he was sculpturing with his eyes. What I mean is, that I was feeling as if the image of the composition was growing, immaterially, halfway between my face and his eyes, within what we might call the dimension of his sight.
It was a little as if the earthen block on which he was working were a thing apart, on one side. He touched it -- moulded it -- but almost without looking at it. It really seemed as if he was looking only at my face and its particulars.
He was leaning forward looking at me. And yet I was not feeling embarassed, as I had though I would be before I began sitting for him. I was not feeling embarassed because it was just as if everything was happening between the sculptor and his work. As if I, substantially, were a spectator. In reality, I enjoyed a rather rare moment during those sittings: the moment when the sculptor, exactly by dint of looking, succeeds in catching in a model the structure which is its definition. A figure made of sense.
Emilio Tadini, "Achille Guzzardella: 12 Portraits", quoted on page 28; "Achille Guzzardella: Twenty years of Sculpture", quoted on page 51.