‘Manfredi (Dino) Quartana was born in Borgo-sesia (Vercelli, Italy) in 1938, studied architecture in Milan and moved to Paris in 1982, where he studied drawing (with Mme. Larnaudie at the Applied Arts) and sculpture (at the Academy of Fine Arts, in the Ate-lier of Bernaud Perrin and Etienne Martin). He runs a course on sculpting in Paris. From 1973 to date, he has taken part in many collective exhibitions and has also held a few personal exhibitions. In 1984 he produced the monument dedicated to Solidarnosc for the city of Grenoble. The exhibition at the Meeting displays 25 sculp-tures (made of different materials, mainly iron, but also plaster, bronze, granite and resin), some sketches of the monument to So-lidarnosc, as well as other drawings by the author. Here are some passages, from the introduction by Rodolfo Balzarotti to the catalogue published by Jaca Book, on Quartana and his work. “In his most recent production, Quartana shows his preference for the welded iron technique, which we find in works such as “Wounded warrior”, “The King”, “Sacrifice”, “Resistance” and, also, throughout the important ‘games’ series. This includes works such as ‘The beach’, ‘The little horse’, ‘Small and big skipping’, ‘The circle’ and ‘The kite’, and it represents an important development compared to his previous production, also introducing some elements of novelty. Whereas in ‘The Warriors’ series all the bodies concentrate on the tension of standing, staying, resisting, here the body is a small cosmos in happy expansion and suspension, almost freed from the laws of gravity. It is not a coincidence that the sculptures so far mentioned can be found under two categories: war and game. Why, then, war and game? A game, like war, is an effort which results in the achievement of a certain measure of ourselves, of our being. In their original meaning (“a gesture in which the whole of myself acts”, as Quartana writes, referring to his own work) war and game are on this respect the two sides of the same coin. The convergence and unity of war and game can be easily perceived in the third section which includes works like “An-gels”, “Sacrifice”, “Resistance”, “Ulysses”, “Barbaric prayer” and “Small offering”. Quartana calls this group of sculptures “surgissements”, i.e. elevations or, better, “emergence” and “libe-ration”. Quartana’s last work, the monu-ment to Solidarnosc commissioned by the city of Greno-ble, is certainly a particular stop along his creative path. All the central motives of Quartana’s work are summarised here, and give each other character: the struggle, the innocence of the game and the liberation towards the sky “.’