Franco D’Aspro (Mondovì 1911 – Arbatax 1995) is the author of the Stations of the Cross and the processional cross commissioned from the sculptor in the late 1970s.
A graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna (1930), he received numerous academic awards (Trieste and Venice) and art prizes in Italy and abroad, combining his work as a sculptor and painter with teaching at the Liceo Artistico in Cagliari. Before arriving in Sardinia (1938), his adopted homeland, D’Aspro lived in Avellino, Bologna and Naples (where he became acquainted with the art of Gemito), thus completing his artistic training. From an impressionistic approach (close to Grandi and Rosso) he gradually came to a “sketchy” language very close to Paganin and Giacometti. Inspired by Nuragic bronzes, D’Aspro, preferring bronze and silver, elaborates a plastic language, which verges on the most daring stylizations, imparting to his characters an extraordinary vitality. Numerous themes were addressed by the sculptor, from portraiture to social, literary and religious ones, the latter characterized by a particular feeling of adherence to the mystery of Christ, especially in his human experience of pain.
