“I wouldn’t be able to live without sculpture, for me it is ideology, society, God.”

These words clearly reflect Rollo's absolute faith in sculpture.

A strenuous defender of the use of manual skill in art, of the taglio diretto (direct carving, or “the hand that works the form”), he began working wood and iron when still very young. In the early seventies he discovered new materials, such as marble and semiprecious stones, marking a decisive step in his artistic development. He became, as he liked to describe himself, a “scultore pietrante”, that is a sculptor who worked stone and was himself turning into stone.