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Young, wealthy and headstrong, Manel Àlvarez was living in Carrara, an artsy Italian city just of the Mediterranean coast in Tuscany, embarking on a mission to make it as an artist.

With an offer in hand from an Italian foundation, he went about the business of becoming an sculptor, and Carrara was an awful good place to do just that. Carrara marble is an exquisite blue-white and the stone has been used as part of the Pantheon in Rome, the Marble Arch in London and, perhaps most famously, Michelangelo’s iconic “David.”

But at first marble, which he once thought was “cold,” did not entice the young Spaniard.

That all changed when one day, in Carrara, he was connected with a quirky and brilliant marble sculptor named Pietro and met the man at his studio to watch him work. On this particular day, Pietro was starting a new piece, and when Àlvarez walked into his enormous studio he was confronted with a massive marble stone and Pietro standing on top of it, wielding a crayon, a hammer and a small model of the thing he was about to create.

Àlvarez, sitting patiently in a Northwest Montana art museum more than 40 years later, picks up the story from there.

“He marks with a crayon on (the marble) and then he starts to mark with the hammer,” he begins before articulating gentle hammer marks with the sound “bam, bam, bam, bam, bam.”

“When he has the line, he’s put his feet here,” he says.

The 71-year-old then rises from his chair, reaches high above his head, holding the invisible hammer with both hands and struggling under its immense, imagined weight. He spreads his feet for added support before smashing the hammer down.

“’POW! POW! POW!’” he yells. “And you feel the ‘creeeaaaak’ because the stone is open.”

A smile is creeping across Àlvarez’s face.

“Then he moves out and he goes from there ‘POW! POW!’ and you feel three tons (crash) on the floor.

“It’s a show. It’s a theater. You are there. It’s dramatic, no? And I was shocked at this.”

His smile widens.

“(I think) ‘this is amazing’ and then I decided ‘OK, I like the marble.’”

THE ART of Manel Àlvarez takes over the Hockaday Museum of Art in Kalispell beginning tonight. His exhibition, “Step by Step,” will run through Aug. 5.

An opening reception is Thursday from 5 to 7 p.m. and Àlvarez will host an artist talk Saturday from 4 to 5:30 p.m.

Since his days watching monstrous blocks of marble crash to the floor in Carrara, Àlvarez has become an internationally acclaimed sculptor, with art on display around the world, in museums and in public. He was commissioned to create a work for the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, which is on permanent display at the Fulton County Courthouse, and has other major public pieces in Spain, France and the United States.

His exhibition at the Hockaday features Àlvarez’s latest passion, Northwest Montana history, its Native American communities and the region’s stately bison.

“I’m trying to work on something next to the people that will see my show,” Àlvarez said. “It’s a way to connect with them, for one part. For another part, very important to me, is I’m learning. I learn stories, traditions and other things.

“And there is part adventure, too, because expressing something don’t know much is not easy, and finding aesthetical solutions is a compromise for me.”

Àlvarez has spent the last six months visiting reservations and museums in the state, and has made several trips to the National Bison Range in Charlo.

Hockaday Executive Director Tracy Johnson said one of the things that separates Àlvarez’s work is the amount of time he spends learning about his subjects.

“Partly it’s the materials that he’s working with and it’s also that he’s spent time studying the bison to get those lines just right,” she said. “When you look at the (bison sculptures) outside, they are life-size and you can just imagine their eyes and their nose and their curly hair. He captures that spirit in his work.”

Àlvarez’s sculptures are abstract but still recognizable, the three bison currently outside the Hockaday examples of that style. They are solid iron — so no features, no definition, no texture — but the animals are immediately identifiable and they, along with his marble sculptures “The Explorer” and “Young Girl,” express the solemn dignity and pride Àlvarez has come to associate with Native American culture.

YEARS BEFORE he moved to Carrara, Àlvarez was going to be a professional soccer player. When he was 12 or 13, he said he was recruited by the powerful club team Valencia CF to leave home and take classes at their schools while training for the professional team in La Liga, Spain’s premier professional circuit.

When his parents refused to let him go, Àlvarez rebelled with deceit. He told his parents a critical school test was one day later than it actually was, then showed up at the school and feigned shock that he had recalled the date of the test incorrectly.

His parents saw through the ruse.

“I went back home and says to my parents ‘oh, I’m sorry,” he recalled. “And they said, ‘OK, you don’t want to study? Go to work.’”

So the 13-year-old Àlvarez went to work, one year younger than the minimum working age in the country at the time, and continued to play soccer on the side. When soccer didn’t pan out — partly because Àlvarez kept getting kicked out of matches because “I change my character” — he turned to another love, sculpting.

Àlvarez began by sculpting wood and was successfully selling wooden saints through a religious school in the area. Eventually, he moved into design and by the time he was in his mid-20s, Àlvarez had turned a self-started design and architecture operation into a job at a rapidly expanding Spanish bank.

In less than two years, Àlvarez designed 96 banks around the country and made enough money to buy a penthouse apartment, a car and financial security for years to come. But he had also become, in his words, “fat as a pig,” eating poorly and not sleeping to keep up with the rat race.

When the design project for the bank wrapped up, Àlvarez was offered a full-time job to maintain the projects and buildings he had created. Without the blessing of his family, and with the impetuousness of youth, Àlvarez walked away from the bank and decided, with no real plan, to walk away from a steady job, move to Italy and make sculptures.

“My family was crazy with me,” Àlvarez recalled. “’Salary, security, blah, blah, blah!’

“But I said ‘this is not what I want to do.’ I said, ‘I don’t need to work for four or five years, with this money.’”

So Àlvarez ended up in Carrara and found his muse in marble, but the two did not hit it off right away. The initially cautious and particular Spaniard struggled in his early years to get over his conservative tendencies and get straight to work creating art out of a very expensive stone.

Today, unlike in his earlier years, Àlvarez sculpts from his mind — visualizing what he’s going to create after making a few simple drawings, often based off photographs he has taken. That was the sequence that led him to create the bison outside the Hockaday, one of which will remain at the museum even after the exhibit closes.

“I don’t know,” Àlvarez said when asked to describe his process. “I am trying and when I see ‘this is what I have in my mind,’ I stop.”

THE EXHIBIT is a signature achievement for the Hockaday, which managed to connect with Àlvarez after a show he did in Great Falls last year.

The well-known artist first came to Montana because his wife, Linda Malisani, is a Great Falls native, and when a Hockaday representative saw Àlvarez’s show in 2016 they invited him to display in Kalispell.

Johnson, the museum’s executive director, said landing the exhibition could give a major boost to the Hockaday’s reputation.

“I think regionally, nationally and globally it increases our showing in the art world,” she said. “And that’s a huge benefit, especially with all the tourists coming. It really increases our reach and our viewing.

“And,” she continued. “It really is teaching our staff a lot about how international artists work. We’re finding ourselves growing and it opens up opportunities for us to get other international artists to come here that we can work with.

“We’re just so honored that he wanted to come here,” Johnson concluded. “He’s shown at so many amazing museums. It’s kind of a step up for us and we’re very proud of it.”

For more on the exhibit, visit www.hockadaymuseum.org. To find out more about Àlvarez and see some of his works, visit www.manelalvarez.com.

Entertainment editor Andy Viano can be reached at (406) 758-4439 or aviano@dailyinterlake.com.