«With its visible stratifications, the terracotta's fracture will reveal the true history of the creation of the sculpture, as in the breaking of a shell the true way of its creation becomes visible, or in the cut of a tree [...] We are made of stratifications and it's by following intuitions, repentances, new decisions that we arrive to create a work. Which is not the execution of an idea, but it's the idea itself [...] And what should I say if not this? Time that goes by, that consumes and destroys, the new things is going to be added to the old ones. New feelings, new ideas and this elusive presence that can be grasped only in a moment, made of new and old [...] My basic way of doing sculpture is by removing and adding. Thus its beginning, becoming and ending take place with these acts and creates its own time»
Leoncillo, from Piccolo diario (July 1957), in AAVV, Leoncillo, Galleria d'Arte Maggiore g.a.m., Bologna 2002.