| LIBERO ANDREOTTI (Pescia 1875 - Florence 1933) STANDING FEMALE FIGURE: A VIRTUE (Prudence, with the attribute of the snake). Bronze, c. 1926-27. 32 by 10 by 5 cm. A bozzetto for one of the four cardinal virtues conceived for the Monument to Victory in Bolzano. See O. Casazza, 'Gipsoteca Libero Andreotti', Florence, 1992; p. 153, no. 39. Andreotti studied in Lucca, Palermo and Florence. He arrived in Milan in 1906 and was immediately promoted by Alberto Grubicy, the director of the Divisionist gallery, who paid Andreotti a monthly fee for sole representation of his works. This association with Grubicy did bring the Andreotti's name to the attention of leading artists and also to the critical establishment, as well as to the art market. In 1909, Andreotti arrived in Paris where he remained until 1914, deeply influenced by the sculpture of Medardo Rosso. In France the forms and the abstractions of the avant-garde (cubism, futurism and dadaism) appealed less to his sensibility, then did a return to the supremacy of form, typified by the work of Bourdelle and Maillol. In 1914, with the outbreak of war, Andreotti returned to Florence. In Tuscany he turned back to traditional examples, primarily 15th-century sculpture. Spurred on by Ugo Ojetti, the most powerful art critic of the period, Andreotti accepted the commission for the Roncade War Memorial in 1922. Two years later he started work on the memorial in Saronno, having won the competition for its design. The third important commission was the monument for the 'Madre Italiana' in Santa Croce, Florence (1924-1926). Between 1926 and 1928 Andreotti worked for the altar of the Monument to Victory in Bolzano, designed by the architect Marcello Piacentini. In July 1927 Andreotti accepted the most prestigious job of his career, two large groups for Milan's War Memorial and Monument to Victory. The two groups 'The intervention' and 'The return of the hero', were never finished. Only the plaster model of the latter, adorned temporarily in November 1928 (the tenth anniversary of the war) the entrance of the Memorial erected in Piazza Sant'Ambrogio. |
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