Furniture

Copper sculpture by Marcello Fantoni from 1959. Signed under the base. Biography: Born in Florence in 1915, Marcello Fantoni starts his artistic career in 1927 when he subscribes to the Art Institute of Porta Romana. He begins to follow the ceramic class of Carlo Guerrini, the artistic director of Cantagalli’s famous manufacture. After his graduation in 1934, he starts to work as the artistic director of a studio in Perugia, before settling in Florence and creating his own ceramic workshop. His production of edition and unique pieces meets a great success from 1937 with the Arts and Crafts exhibition that made him well-known throughout all the country and beyond. After the war years, spent in the Resistance, he comes back to his artistic activity with fever, developing his workshop’s production and increasing his collaborations. His success grows in the 1960’s and 1970’s: his unique sculptures adopt both a very contemporary aesthetic and historical references, such as the Etruscan ceramics...

Animal bronze sculpture representing a rooster by Luciano Minguzzi (1911-2004), named "Gallo" meaning Rooster. This sculpture has been created with the Lost wax cast bronze technique, it is signed Minguzzi, and it is edition number 1070/1500, size h 44 x 47 x 37 cm. The authenticity certificate is available. Luciano Minguzzi (Bologna, May 24, 1911 - Milan, May 30, 2004) was an Italian sculptor and medalist. He made his first experiences under the wise guidance of his father, also a sculptor, continuing his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna following the engraving courses held by Giorgio Morandi, those of sculpture under the guidance of Ercole Drei, attending all the lessons of Roberto Longhi at university. Thanks to a scholarship, he stayed in Paris and London, starting to exhibit in 1933 and already at the Roman Quadrennial of 1943 he obtained his first prize, followed by others including the Angelicum of 1946 and the first place ex aequo at the Biennale del 1950. In the immediate post-war period he built the monument to the Partisan and the Partisan for his hometown, located at Porta Lame, in the area where an epic battle between Nazis and Fascists took place in 1944. The work, composed of two figures of young people - one of whom was an army - captured in a moment of great naturalness, was forged with cast bronze by the equestrian statue of Benito Mussolini (work by Giuseppe Graziosi) which was located inside the current "Renato Dall'Ara" Stadium, in turn built with some cannons stolen from the Austrians during the Bolognese Risorgimento uprisings of 1848. Still on the theme related to the war, but with a changed style with more dramatic and expressionist tones, in the fifties he created the series of sculptures inspired by the theme of the men of the Lager and the unknown and anonymous victims, obtaining in 1953 the third prize in the competition for the "Monument to the Unknown Political Prisoner" held by the Tate Gallery (London). In 1950 he won the competition announced for the "Fifth Door" of the Milan Cathedral, which ended in 1965. In 1962 he participated, together with the most important international sculptors of the time, in the exhibition Sculptures in the city organized by Giovanni Carandente as part of the V Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto. He presented a 1958 iron and bronze sculpture entitled Pas-de-quatre. In 1970 he was given the task for the construction of the "door of good and evil" of the basilica of San Pietro in the Vatican, where he worked with vigor and passion for seven years. In 2012, on the occasion of the centenary of the artist's birth, a posthumous anthological exhibition was set up in Bologna at the Fondazione del Monte [1]. He also worked as a medalist: his example was the silver 500 lire coin...

Exceptional Bronze "Figura In Poltrona" by famous Milanese Artist Luciano Minguzzi (1911 - 2004) dating from 1986. Minguzzi is famous for his gates at St Peter's Basilica in Rome and...