PEACE - GIACOMO MANZU'

Pseudonym of the Italian sculptor Giacomo Manzoni (Bergamo 1908 - Ardea 1991). Although he was linked to the impressionism of M. Rosso, he absorbed the values ​​of ancient sculpture and infused his art with a high religious and civil inspiration (the series of Depositions and Crucifixions , 1940-43). He was widely recognized internationally (the door of Salzburg Cathedral, 1955-58) and nationally (the Door of Death for St. Peter's Basilica, 1959-64). Winner of the Lenin Peace Prize (1966) and the Feltrinelli International Prize (1984).

LIFE

After an initial apprenticeship as a carver (1919–21), M. attended evening school for decorative plastic art in Bergamo and, during his military service, the Cignaroli Academy in Verona. After a brief trip to Paris, in 1929 he settled in Milan, where he came into contact with the Milanese avant-garde and received his first commission from the Catholic University in 1932. Having won the competition for the three bronze doors of St. Peter's in 1950, along with Biagini and Crocetti, in 1954 he was appointed an Academician of San Luca; in the same year he resigned from the chair of sculpture at Brera, which he had held since 1941, and began teaching at the International Academy of Salzburg (1954–60), where he met O. Kokoschka and I. Schabel, his future companion and inspiration. In 1969 he inaugurated the Amici di Manzù collection in Ardea, where he had his studio and home, donated to the Italian state in 1981.

WORKS

In the 1930s, particularly after 1934, M. turned to intimate subjects which, while harking back to the plastic impressionism of M. Rosso, also demonstrate a careful meditation on the values ​​of ancient sculpture. Thus, as evidence of a high religious inspiration and of his profound anti-fascist political commitment, the series of Depositions and Crucifixions (1940-43) were born, followed by the series of Cardinals and Bishops and numerous portraits, full of touching humanity. Widely recognized internationally, in the 1950s M. obtained prestigious public commissions and executed the door of the Salzburg Cathedral (1955-58, focused on the theme of love), which attests to a maturity and expressive happiness also found in his rich and constant graphic production and which anticipates, in the simplification of the compositional schemes and in the rigorous design research, solutions that would characterize the subsequent doors of the Vatican. Engaged in a series of commissions for John XXIII, between 1959 and 1964, M. completed the famous Door of Death for St. Peter's Basilica, which testifies, through a tense and dramatic narrative, to his civic commitment and profound faith in man's ultimate redemption. In 1969, M. completed the Door of Peace and War for the church of Saint Laurenz in Rotterdam (the theme of which would inspire him in 1972 for the relief of the European Community building in Luxembourg and again in 1977 for the monument to the Partisan in Bergamo).

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