When Daniel Spoerri’s good friend Roland Topor died in 1997, it spurred him to leave Paris and move to the Giardino. It was natural that there, where all his artist friends and important artistic encounters are documented by works, there should also be something to memorialise Topor. However, there are no sculptures by Roland Topor. He was a satirist and illustrator. So Spoerri selected a drawing. This graphic work provided the basis for the sculpture that we can now see in the Giardino. After a clay model was made, it was hewn in marble by a »scalpellina« in Carrara.

Spoerri had been invited to propose a sculpture for the slopes of Vesuvius which would then be executed on site. He immediately had an idea, because he was reminded of a drawing by his deceased friend: a crouching woman observing a handful of small balls rolling from her lap. To Spoerri, this is a symbol of grief, but it is also related to the discharging earth. After all, the Neapolitans do call their volcano »Mamma muntagna«. The Vesuvius project ran aground. No sculptor could be found in the area of Naples who was capable of transforming Topor’s drawing. The offending form appeared to be too complicated. In Carrara, however, Esther Seidel came across a stone sculptor who appeared to be equal to the job.