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BARBIERO joseph

[1901, Trebaseleghe, Italie — 1992, Beaumont, France]

Joseph Barbiero, a mason, fled Mussolini’s Italy in the early 1920s and settled in Auvergne, retaining the accent of his Venetian dialect. He participated in the restoration of Notre-Dame-du-Port and Clermont-Ferrand Cathedral and was naturalized as a French citizen in 1931.
After retiring, he devoted the final twenty-five years of his life to creating a body of work sculpted in volcanic stone, echoing Celtic traditions that predate Roman colonization. Concurrently, he produced small graphite drawings on salvaged pieces of rusk packaging—often on both sides—depicting human or animal figures with a charmingly “barbaric” flair.