Giacomo Manzù

Biography

Born in Bergamo in 1908, Giacomo Manzù moves to Milan just after turning twenty. In 1931 he takes part in an important collective exhibition at the Galleria Il Milione, and has his first exhibition with the painter Aligi Sassu at the “Cometa” gallery in Rome.

In 1938 he begins his Cardinali (Cardinals) series, the iconic theme of his career. The first Seated Cardinal, 65cm high, is displayed at the Rome Quadriennale in 1939 together with David, and is subsequently bought by the Gallery of Modern Art in Rome. Manzù produces over 300 versions of this theme, in different dimensions and materials.

In 1939 he starts work on a series of bas-reliefs in bronze, Le Deposizioni (The Deposition of Christ) and Le Crocifissioni (The Crucifixion), where the holy theme of the death of Christ is used to symbolise first the brutality of the fascist regime and then the horrors of the war.

After attaining a post teaching sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Brera, he moves to Turin where he teaches sculpture at the Accademia Albertina, escaping to take refuge in Clusone because of the war. His nude Francesca Blanc wins the prize at the Rome Quadriennale in 1943. After the war he returns to teach at the Accademia of Brera until 1954, and then at the Sommerakademie in Salzburg until 1960. There he meets Inge Schnabel, who becomes his life-long partner and with whom he has two children, Giulia and Mileto. Inge and her sister Sonja become the models for many of his portraits. He later realises one of his most famous works, la Porta della Morte (The Door of Death) at Saint Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, that takes him from 1947 to 1964. Towards the end of the 1950s he begins a collaboration with the MAF foundry in Milan. Between 1956 and 1958 he confronts the theme of Mother and Child and completes the Door of Love for Salzburg Cathedral.

In 1962 together with other well known international sculptors, he takes part in the Sculpture Exhibition organised by Giovanni Carandente during the 5th Festival of the Two Worlds in Spoleto. He then moves to a villa close to Ardea (Rome), in the municipality of Aprilia. The area between Ardea and Aprilia has been renamed Colle Manzù and the municipality of Aprilia has dedicated its public library and conference room to him. Between 1965 and 1968 he sculpts the Door of Peace and War for the church of Saint Laurens in Rotterdam.

In 1969 the Museo Amici di Manzù (Friends of Manzù Museum) is inaugurated in Ardea. In the late 1970s he becomes a set designer, designing costumes and sets for productions of Igor Stravinsky, Goffredo Petrassi, Claude Debussy, Richard Wagner and Giuseppe Verdi. The sculptor’s fame reaches Japan, where in 1973 he holds has an individual exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo.

In 1989, in New York, his final large piece is inaugurated in front of the headquarters of the UN, a 6 metre high bronze sculpture. Today his works are admired in the most famous museums in the world: from the Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Bergamo, to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, from the Gallery of Modern Art in Rome to the Vatican Museum.