Found him. Fillipo Bentivegna.
The best link I could find was a blogger on our very thread topic:
https://outsider-environments.blogspot.com.au/2009/01/filippo-bentivegna-il-castello.html
Filippo Bentivegna, Il Castello Incantato/The Enchanted Castle
picture (2012) licensed under Creative Commons
Life and works
Born in the litlle community of Sciacca in Sicily, Italy, as the son of a fisherman, Filippo Bentivegna (1888-1967) as a young man couldn't find work in Italy, and so, like many other young Italians, in 1912 he migrated to the United States.
Where he stayed in the US is not very clear. One source says he was in Chicago, being employed by a company that constructed railroads. Another source says he stayed in Boston and worked in the harbour. This is probably correct, because Bentivegna had family over there (nowadays members of the Bentivegna family still live in Boston, according to Facebook messages).
The story is that he had a love affair, that (for him) ended in a traumatic experience. He probably courted a young lady, the daughter of an important man in town, who thought Filippo was no party and "teached him a lesson". i.e. had him attacked physically.
But it might also be that Filippo had an accident on the wharf were he worked. The accident or whatever it was, may have caused mental problems.
Anyhow, it was the end of the american adventure, and after WWI, in 1919, Filippo returned to his hometown Sciacca.
Back in Italy
Since he had fled his military service in Italy, he was convicted to some years in prison, but this was not affected, because at the same time he also was declared to be insane.
Probably because he had saved some money from what he had earned in the U.S., Filippo Bentivegna was able to buy a plot of ground in Sciacca, where he went to live in a small cabin.
While cleaning the terrain from the many rocks which were dispersed on the plot, he got the idea to carve them into impersonations of people.
picture (Flickr, apr 2010) courtesy of i-bluesky (Dario)
click to enlarge
Carving heads into the limestone rocks would become a project he has been doing the rest of his life, ultimately producing some three thousand of these heads.
When asked why he made these sculptures, Bentivegna would answer that he did this just for himself, without any intention of selling them.
picture from the Facebook album devoted to Bentivegna
Bentivegna also made frescoes on the wall of a cabin in the garden with memories of his stay in the US, urban scenes with skyscrapers, creations that nowadays are considered as art brut.
The people of Sciacca called him Filippo delli testi, he was mostly ridiculed and probably his behaviour in public was somewhat eccentric indeed.
The site has been saved for the future
Following his death in 1967, the site was left unattended for although some members of the family would allow visitors to look around after paying a small entrance fee.
In 1971 Gabriele Stocchi from Rome, an acquaintance of Jean Dubuffet, when on a study tour in Sicily, paid a visit to Bentivegna's art environment. He contacted Dubuffet and it was agreed that Stocchi would buy a number of creations for Dubuffet's outsider art collection. End 1971 some ten creations were sent to Dubuffet, which currently are part of the Collection d'Art Brut in Lausanne, Switzerland (More about this in a contribution by Lucienne Peiry to a 2015 conference about Bentivegna).
The sculpture garden gradually became better appreciated and in 1974 the government of Sicily bought the site and also implemented a (rather unfaithful) restoration.
Currently the Enchanted Castle is a well known outsider art environment, which has become a tourist attraction.
Here's another on atlasobscura, which was the link I'd saved last year.
http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/castello-incantato
QUOTE
In 1929, Filippo Bentivegna left the United States after only 7 years and was a changed man. According to some, he had been assaulted and sustained brain damage. Others claimed his mind had begun to unravel after a woman broke his heart. Although the details are unclear, when he returned to his hometown of Sciacca in Sicily, he began a massive sculpture garden and was considered the village madman.
Having skipped out on military service under Mussolini to live in America, a prison sentence greeted Bentivegna when he returned to Italy. Luckily, or unluckily, he was declared too insane to serve his sentence, and instead bought a small plot of land on the outskirts of Sciacca. Living alone, he built a small cabin and began to develop the rocky land he had purchased.
Since there was little else he could do with his lot, he began to carve heads from the rocky outcroppings on his property. Resembling people he had met in America and in Italy, he spent the next 35 years sculpting until his garden had reached a total of more than 1,000 heads. During his life, his work was never appreciated, and his eccentric behavior earned him the title of village madman.
After his death in 1967, his family made his works a tourist site, where people began to come from all around Sicily to see the carvings, and a series of simplistic frescoes Bentivegna did inside his cabin. Renamed the Enchanted Castle, the under-appreciated works of this madman are now a major draw for visitors in Southern Sicily.
/QUOTE
Here's a slideshow from TripAdvisor - be warned the download is really heavy on TA.
And a video of the landscapes.
-ish story has begun to unfold in Detroit, USA—an asbestos inspector (what a thankless job THAT must be in Detroit) found several drawings in a house slated for demolition, and gave them to that city’s alt-weekly, the Metro Times."
