Giacomo Manzù: Sculptor and Draughtsman

About

As sensitive to line as he was to form, his drawings exhibit the same restrained power and sinuous qualities familiar to us from his more celebrated bas-reliefs and three-dimensional work.

Although apprenticed to various craftsmen from an early age, Manzù was largely self-taught as an artist. Key influences on his style included the sculptors Auguste Rodin and Medardo Rosso – the latter’s realism and ability to capture fleeting sensations and expressions being particularly important.

In the late 1930s Manzù began his famous series of Cardinals, sculpting his sitters enveloped by their liturgical vestments, radiating a profound sense of monumentality and serenity. Toward the end of the decade he also began a series of bas-reliefs on the theme of the Crucifixion which, despite being characterised by a subtlety of line recalling the work of Donatello, were also passionate and unflinching indictments of Nazi-Fascist violence. In the post-war era Manzù would establish himself as one of Italy’s foremost sculptors of religious subjects. However, like his contemporary, Emilio Greco, Manzù was as drawn to the sensual world as he was to that of the spirit, his vigorous sculptures of entwined lovers being infused with a playful character that frequently verges on the bawdy.

Works exploring all of these key themes are featured in the exhibition, and are accompanied by tender and more personal portraits of family members, as well as a number of works depicting characters from mythology, and examples of Manzù’s unusual – and highly distinctive – naturalistic sculptures of still lifes.

Organised with Bologna’s Galleria d’Arte Maggiore, this exhibition presents some fifty works by one of modern Italian art’s undisputed masters.