Artist:Dino Basaldella
Dates:
1909 — 1977, UdineInformation:Sculptor, Italy
Link:Wikipedia
Dino Basaldella
Sculptor
Dino Basaldella, Piccolo motivo chiuso, 1971–1972, 58×18 cm, Iron sculpture
Dino Basaldella, Piccolo motivo chiuso, 1971–1972, 58×18 cm, Iron sculpture
Biography
Elder brother of Afro and Mirko, Dino Basaldella was born in Udine in 1909. He inherited his interest in painting and 3d modelling from his uncle Remo, a professional goldsmith who in 1923 convinces their mother to enrol the three boys at the Istituto Evangelico Industriale Serenissima di Venezia. Five years later the boys attend the Friulan Avant-garde School founded by the painters Angilotto Modotto and Alessandro Filipponi.
At the end of the 1920s he transfers to Florence to study at the Liceo Artistico. A pupil of Domenico Trentacosta, he meets and frequents Libero Andreotti and Ugo Ojetti. In 1930 he joins his brother Afro in Rome, where he is particularly struck by ancient Etruscan sculptures and has the opportunity to meet Arturo Martini, Scipione, Corrado Cagli. After graduating in art at the Academy of Fine Arts and the Liceo Artistico in Venice, he begins to teach technology and professional design in the province of Udine and Trieste.
His artistic activities take place in his native region and Rome. On the occasion of his debut at the Quadriennale in Rome in 1935, the Mayor/Governor of the capital buys a work in wax, the “Pescatore con anguilla”. Six years later, two of his marble groups Ercole e chimera and Centauro e Leone are placed at the entrance of the Palazzo degli Uffici in the EUR complex.
From 1943-1948 he teaches sculpture at the Liceo Artistico and the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, where he forms a close friendship with Alberto Viani. He becomes a Communist party sympathiser and after 8th September 1943 he joins the partisan movement Brigata Biancotto, together with other artists such as Pizzinato, Turcato and Vedova.
At the end of his teaching experience in Venice he attains the post of teaching sculpture at the Gorizia Institute of Art, which he holds until 1957. He produces many works in Friuli thanks to his collaborations with the architects Midena and Gino Valle (such as the Monument for the Resistance in piazzale XXVI luglio, sculptures for the Malignani Institute in Udine and for the Kennedy Institute in Pordenone), but also in Modena, Rome and Milan.
From a stylistic perspective, during the 1950s he progressively abandons the figurative to dedicate himself to a radical experimentation, based mainly on welding and the assembly of iron. At the same time, his goldsmith and decorative activity started in the 1930s but never abandoned, remains very active. In the 1960s, after twenty years of local activity, an exhibition at the La Tartaruga Gallery marks his relaunch on a national scale. There follow a number of participations at international exhibitions and a return to the Venice Biennale.
Notwithstanding his exhibition commitments in Italy and abroad, his teaching never takes second place. In 1961 he attains the post teaching sculpture at the Udine School of Art, (later known as the Istituto statale d’Arte Giovanni Sello); following this he gains the same post at the Carrara Academy and from 1970 has the role of teaching sculpture at the Brera Fine Art Academy. He dies in Udine in 1977.