British Artist Gormley Brings Cardboard Immersion to San Gimignano

Antony Gormley, the British sculptor behind the 'Angel of the North' in Gateshead and 'Event Horizon' in New York, has opened an exhibition titled "What Holds Us" at Galleria Continua in San Gimignano, Tuscany. According to Forbes, the centerpiece is "Innercity", which marks the first time Gormley has worked in cardboard and represents one of his most immersive works to date. The shift away from his signature cast-iron and bronze toward a material at once fragile and ubiquitous signals a departure in his artistic method.

Gormley's practice has long engaged with the human body and its relationship to space. His monumental public works—installed in cities from London to New York—have established him as a sculptor of architectural ambition. The cardboard works at San Gimignano introduce a material economy and ephemerality that contrast sharply with the permanence of his earlier pieces. Forbes notes that the exhibition represents Gormley's quest to "reconnect us with the physical world", a thematic return to embodied experience.

San Gimignano, the medieval walled town in central Tuscany, has long attracted international art tourism alongside its conventional heritage visitors. Galleria Continua, the contemporary gallery housed in the town's historic fabric, has positioned San Gimignano as a secondary node in the international art circuit—a counterpoint to Florence's museum-heavy reputation. The exhibition suggests how Tuscan towns beyond the capital are beginning to compete for serious contemporary practice, not merely to house it as a postcard backdrop.