A mason, Joseph Barbiero fled Mussolini’s Italy in the early 1920s and settled in Auvergne without losing the accent of his Venetian dialect. He participated in the restoration of Notre-Dame-du-Port and the Cathedral of Clermont-Ferrand. He acquired French nationality in 1931.After retiring, he devoted the last twenty-five years of his life to carving volcanic stone, pieces not unrelated to the Celtic sources anterior to Roman colonization. At the same time, he made small drawings in pencil on pieces of recovered biscuit packets which represent, often on both sides, human figures and animals of wonderful “barbarism”. His work was exposed for the first time in 1982, and is now part of the greatest collections of art brut.
BARBIERO joseph
