The caves of Rubbio take their name from the small mountain hamlet (1,057 m) that extends across the municipalities of Bassano del Grappa and Lusiana Conco in the province of Vicenza.
Used as quarries in the past, the rock amphitheatres created by the excavation of limestone were reclaimed in the 1980s and transformed into works of art by Toni Zarpellon of Bassano.
The first, and most famous, of the four caves on the grassy path is the “painted cave”. The artist used bright colours to paint the various shapes that emerged from the rock face, giving them the look of faces or stylized animals. His use of colour and the paintings’ persistent contemplation of the visitor is a reflection on man’s relationship with nature, as evoked in a line on the rock: “The relationship with silence and the open space of nature helps us discover our own identity”.
The “inhabited cave” that follows conserves over one hundred rusty petrol tanks and exhaust pipes which portray human faces with serious, sad and suffering expressions from the holes or cuts in the metal. In this case, the message is a warning to modern society: “Freedom from the false myths and nightmares of industrial civilisation and consumption”.
The path through the woods leads to the last two caves, now overtaken by nature: the “workshop cave”, a space left empty for the visitor’s own interpretation and the “theatre cave”, created in 2009 for summer activities for children.
Fondazione Veneto Film Commission
Via Carducci, 32 – 30171 Venezia Mestre
Phone: +39 041 279 43 38
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