The “Carved Forest”, a museum that emerged from the ashes of a mountain in Argentina

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Hanging from the clouds, at an altitude of 1,400 meters, emerges in Argentine Patagonia, “Bosque Tallado”, a forest of 60 sculptures carved on the remains of a great forest fire, which a group of artists transformed into an open-air museum unique in the world.

The sculptor, artisan, and goldsmith Marcelo López was the driving force behind this work located on Piltriquitrón hill (“hanging from the clouds” in the Araucanian language), on the outskirts of the town of El Bolsón, in the province of Río Negro in southwest Argentina.

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Years ago, on a walk through “el Piltri”, the sculptor saw the remains of a fire that occurred in 1980: “There was an impressive amount of fallen trees, burned, they were gigantic lengas (…) I felt like doing something with that wood that was dead, burned, lying there,” the artist told Efe news agency.

A regular participant in meetings with sculptors, López thought of organizing an event in the burned forest on the hill: “to take the artists to make works on all those trunks, that the works remain there and that the people who walk by will be surprised”.

FROM THE PROJECT TO ITS REALIZATION

With a clear idea: to promote the exchange of creative experiences, enrich the region’s artistic and cultural heritage, and give new life to trees burned by human negligence, the artist began to think about how to finance the project.

In 1998, together with his partner Gabriela and colleagues from the area, he raised enough funds to hold the first national meeting of sculptors on Piltriquitrón hill.

In that first 8-day meeting, the first 13 sculptures were made. Despite the “pharaonic effort” involved in raising funds, transporting artists, work equipment, food and tents with horses over a mountain road, gravel and steep dirt, “that’s when the desire to continue, to make the second, the third…”.

Scattered through the forest, hidden in the undergrowth, goblins, harlequins, pumas, wild boars, feathered snakes, human figures, and “works of all kinds” were slowly populating the area, giving it the vitality it had lost in the fire.

In those five meetings, spread over a little more than 10 years, groups of between 8 and 12 sculptors “from all the provinces and abroad” crafted 60 works, which as part of the “Bosque Tallado” were declared cultural and tourist heritage of the province of Río Negro and national, provincial and municipal interest.

CULTURAL HERITAGE FOR POSTERITY

For 18 years, Lopez and his group, formed in a civil association, were in charge of the maintenance and protection of this Open Air Museum, which they present as the highest carved forest on the planet – a space that houses works and a message for the care of natural spaces, which anyone can visit.

“It is a cultural heritage that was left for posterity and the people of El Bolsón (…) It was a lot of work, but it was with pleasure, with joy, it was beautiful,” he says.

Legend has it that the native peoples, through the hill, left offerings “that hung from the sky”. The “Bosque Tallado” is the offering that this group of sculptors has left, not only to “el Piltri”, but to all those people who can visit this work of art exposed to the open sky.