Leonardo Bistolfi | |
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Ai caduti, Casale Monferrato, 1925
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Born |
Casale Monferrato |
14 March 1859
Died | 2 September 1933 La Loggia |
(aged 74)
Nationality | Italian |
Education | Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera |
Known for | Sculpture |
Movement |
Symbolism Stile Liberty |
Leonardo Bistolfi (14 March 1859 – 2 September 1933) was an Italian sculptor, an important exponent of Italian Symbolism.
Bistolfi was born in Casale Monferrato in Piedmont, north-west Italy, to Giovanni Bistolfi, a sculptor in wood, and to Angela Amisano.
In 1876 he enrolled in the Brera Art Academy in Milan, where his teacher was Giosuè Argenti. In 1880 he studied under Odoardo Tabacchi at the Accademia Albertina in Turin.
His first works (Le lavandaie (‘The Washerwomen’), Tramonto (‘Sunset’), Vespero (‘Evening’), Boaro (‘Cattle-hand’), Gli amanti (‘The Lovers’)), executed between 1880 and 1885, show the influence of the Milanese Scapigliatura. In 1882 he sculpted L'Angelo della morte (‘The Angel of Death’) for the Brayda tomb in the Turin cemetery known as the Cimitero Monumentale, and in 1883 he produced a bust of the painter Antonio Fontanesi for the Accademia Albertina: these works show a turn towards Symbolism which the artist was never to abandon.
From this time until 1914 Bistolfi produced many busts, medals and portraits of prominent figures including the Piedmontese painter Lorenzo Delleani, the kings of Italy Vittorio Emanuele II and Umberto I, the criminologist Cesare Lombroso, the writer Edmondo De Amicis, and the publisher and journalist Emilio Treves.