Artist of the day, June 23, 2020: Arturo Martini, an Italian sculptor (#1028)

Arturo Martini (1889–1947) was a leading Italian sculptor between World War I and II. He moved between a very vigorous (almost ancient Roman) classicism and modernism. He was associated with public sculpture in fascist Italy, but later renounced his medium altogether.

Martini seems to have been an active supporter of the Futurist movement between 1914 and 1918. He certainly corresponded with Umberto Boccioni and produced a modernist booklet in 1918. His early works show an archaic tendency, two-dimensionality and polychrome effects in Fascist Italy

Between the wars, he became the semi-official sculptor of the fascist regime. He was literally overwhelmed by commitments: great monuments and commemorative works for courthouses, churches and universities. Examples include the great bronze at La Sapienza University in Rome and the memorial to the aviator Tito Minniti. He sculpted the monument to the Fallen at the Palazzo delle Poste, Naples.

After the fall of Mussolini, feeling that his art had been corrupted, he published an essay against sculpture in the magazine La Martini in 1945: "scultura, lingua morta" (sculpture, a dead language). He writes for example: "La scultura un'arte è da negri e senza pace" (sculpture is a black and unquiet art).

Despite this attack on his own métier, he created one significant work after the war, a marble sculpture in a tribute to the guerrilla leader Primo Visentin, known as "Masaccio", who had been killed at the end of the war in Loria (Padua) in unexplained circumstances.

Martini is as important Italian sculptor in the period between the world wars. He worked with many materials (clay, wood, plaster, stone, especially marble, bronze, silver) but never moved far from figuration, although he was able to model abstract forms, as his atmosfera di una testa (vibrations of a head) of 1944 testifies. He exercised great influence on later Italian sculptors such as Marino Marini, Emilio Greco, Marcello Mascherini, Pericle Fazzini, and his student Fiore de Henriquez.

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Mr. Arturo Martini

1910, L’ubriaco

1910,  Maternità (Amore materno)

1910-11,  Ritratto d’uomo

1913, Prostitute

1913, Ritratto di Omero Soppelsa

1921, Il Dormiente

1922, Ofelia

1926, Horse

1926, Saint George and the Dragon

1927, Figliol prodigo

1929, Lilian Gish

1930, Young Man (Seated-Young Man)

1930-31,  La Lupa

1931, Adamo ed Eva

1931, Zingana

1932, La convalescente

1932, Le Stelle (Le sorelle)

1932, Venere dei porti

1932, Venere dei porti

1933, La Pisana

1934,  La Forza e gli Eroi

1934, The thirst (La sete)

1934, Zingana

1935, Donna nuda - Casta Susanna

1935, I morti di Bligny trasalirebbero trequarti

1935. I morti di Bligny trasalirebbero

1935, The Sprinter

1941-42 Donna che nuota sott’acqua (bozzetto)

1963, Annunciation

Pisana, n.d.

Untitled, n.d.