![Stele di Consegra](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b9/Stele_di_Consegra.jpg)
Pietro Consagra (6 October 1920 – 16 July 2005) was an Italian sculptor. In 1947 he was among the founding members of the
Forma 1 group of artists, who advocated both
Marxism
Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialectical ...
and structured
abstraction.
Life
Consagra was born on 6 October 1920 in
Mazara del Vallo
Mazara del Vallo (; ) is a town and ''comune'' in the province of Trapani, southwestern Sicily, Italy. It lies mainly on the left bank at the mouth of the Mazaro river.
It is an agricultural and fishing centre and its port gives shelter to the ...
, in the
province
A province is almost always an administrative division within a country or state. The term derives from the ancient Roman '' provincia'', which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire's territorial possessions ou ...
of
Trapani
Trapani ( , ; scn, Tràpani ; lat, Drepanum; grc, Δρέπανον) is a city and municipality (''comune'') on the west coast of Sicily, in Italy. It is the capital of the Province of Trapani. Founded by Elymians, the city is still an imp ...
in south-western Sicily, to Luigi Consagra and Maria Lentini. From 1931 he enrolled in a trade school for sailors, studying first to become a mechanic, and later to become a captain. In 1938 he moved to
Palermo, where he enrolled in the ''
liceo artistico''; despite an attack of
tuberculosis
Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, i ...
, he graduated in 1941, and in the same year signed up at the
Accademia di Belle Arti
This is a list of the tertiary-level schools or academies of fine art in Italy that are recognised by the Ministero dell'Istruzione, dell'Università e della Ricerca, the Italian ministry of higher education.
Accademie di Belle Arti
The offic ...
, where he studied
sculpture
Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable ...
under . After the
Invasion of Sicily
The Allied invasion of Sicily, also known as Operation Husky, was a major campaign of World War II in which the Allied forces invaded the island of Sicily in July 1943 and took it from the Axis powers ( Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany). It bega ...
and the Allied occupation of Palermo in 1943, Consagra found work as a
caricaturist
A caricaturist is an artist who specializes in drawing caricatures.
List of caricaturists
* Abed Abdi (born 1942)
* Al Hirschfeld (1903–2003)
* Alex Gard (1900–1948)
* Alexander Saroukhan (1898–1977)
* Alfred Grévin (1827–1892)
* Alf ...
for the American
Red Cross
The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is a humanitarian movement with approximately 97 million volunteers, members and staff worldwide. It was founded to protect human life and health, to ensure respect for all human beings, and ...
club of the city; he also joined the
Italian Communist Party
The Italian Communist Party ( it, Partito Comunista Italiano, PCI) was a communist political party in Italy.
The PCI was founded as ''Communist Party of Italy'' on 21 January 1921 in Livorno by seceding from the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) ...
. Early in 1944, armed with a letter of introduction from an American officer, he travelled to Rome. There he came into contact with the Sicilian artist , and through him with
Renato Guttuso
Renato Guttuso (26 December 1911 – 18 January 1987) was an Italian painter and politician. His best-known works include ''Flight from Etna'' (1938–39), ''Crucifixion'' (1941) and ''La Vucciria'' (1974). Guttuso also designed for the theatre ( ...
, who was also Sicilian and who introduced him to the intellectual life of the city and to other artists such as
Leoncillo Leonardi,
Mario Mafai and
Giulio Turcato
Giulio Turcato (16 March 1912, Mantua – 22 January 1995, Rome) was an Italian artist, belonging to both figurative and abstract expressionist currents.
Biography
Giulio Turcato was born in Mantua. He attended the Accademia di Belle Arti di Venez ...
. Consagra signed up at the
Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma
The Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma is a public tertiary academy of art in Rome, Italy. It was founded in the sixteenth century, but the present institution dates from the time of the unification of Italy and the capture of Rome by the Kingdom ...
in September 1944 and studied sculpture there under
Michele Guerrisi, but left before completing his diploma.
Work
In 1947, with
Carla Accardi,
Ugo Attardi
Ugo Attardi (12 March 1923 in Sori – 20 July 2006 in Rome) was an Italian painter, sculptor and writer.
Attardi moved from Genoa to Rome in the early 1950s, where he formed the group Forma 1 together with other artists such as Carla Acca ...
,
Piero Dorazio
Piero Dorazio (Rome, June 29, 1927 - Perugia, May 17, 2005) was an Italian painter. His work was related to color field painting, lyrical abstraction and other forms of abstract art.
Early life
Dorazio was born in Rome. His father was a civil s ...
,
Mino Guerrini,
Achille Perilli, and
Giulio Turcato
Giulio Turcato (16 March 1912, Mantua – 22 January 1995, Rome) was an Italian artist, belonging to both figurative and abstract expressionist currents.
Biography
Giulio Turcato was born in Mantua. He attended the Accademia di Belle Arti di Venez ...
, Consagra started the
artist's group Forma 1, which advocated both
Marxism
Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialectical ...
and structured
abstraction.
Steadily Consagra's work began to find an audience. Working primarily in metal, and later in marble and wood, his thin, roughly carved reliefs, began to be collected by Peggy Guggenheim and other important patrons of the arts. He showed at the Venice Biennale eleven times between 1950 and 1993, and in 1960 won the sculpture prize at the exhibition.
During the 1960s he was associated with the ''Continuità'' group, an offshoot of Forma I, and in 1967 taught at the School of Arts in Minneapolis. Large commissions allowed him to begin working on a more monumental scale, and works of his were installed in the courtyard of the Foreign Ministry in Rome and in the European Parliament, Strasbourg. His work is found in the collections of The Tate Gallery, London, in
Museo Cantonale d'Arte of
Lugano
Lugano (, , ; lmo, label=Ticinese dialect, Ticinese, Lugan ) is a city and municipality in Switzerland, part of the Lugano District in the canton of Ticino. It is the largest city of both Ticino and the Italian-speaking southern Switzerland. Luga ...
Museo Cantonale d'Arte, Lugano: Pietro Consagra
/ref> and the Museum of Modern Art, Paris, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C..
Consagra returned to Sicily where he sculpted a number of significant works during the 1980s. With Senator Ludovico Corrao, he helped created an open-air museum in the new town of Gibellina
Gibellina ( Sicilian: ''Jibbiddina'', Arabic: "little mount" - جبل صغير) is a small city and ''comune'' in the Province of Trapani, the mountains of central Sicily, Italy. It was destroyed by the 1968 Belice earthquake.
The new city, G ...
, after the older town had been destroyed in the earthquake of 1968. Consagra designed the gates to the town's entrance, the building named "Meeting" and the gates to the cemetery, where he was later buried.
Writings
In 1952 Consagra published ''La necessità della scultura'' ("the need for sculpture"), a response to the essay ''La scultura lingua morta'' ("sculpture, a dead language"), published in 1945 by Arturo Martini
Arturo Martini (1889–1947) was a leading Italian sculptor between World War I and II. He moved between a very vigorous (almost ancient Roman) classicism and modernism. He was associated with public sculpture in fascist Italy, but later renounc ...
. Other works include ''L'agguato c'è'' ("the snare exists", 1960), and ''La città frontale'' ("the frontal city", 1969). His autobiography, ''Vita Mia'', was published by Feltrinelli in 1980.
Reception
In 1989 a substantial retrospective exhibition
A retrospective (from Latin ''retrospectare'', "look back"), generally, is a look back at events that took place, or works that were produced, in the past. As a noun, ''retrospective'' has specific meanings in medicine, software development, popu ...
of work by Consagra was shown at the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna
The ("national gallery of modern and contemporary art"), also known as La Galleria Nazionale, is an art gallery in Rome, Italy. It was founded in 1883 on the initiative of the then Minister Guido Baccelli and is dedicated to modern and contempor ...
in Rome; in 1993 a permanent exhibition of his work was installed there. In 1991 his work was shown in the Hermitage Museum
The State Hermitage Museum ( rus, Государственный Эрмитаж, r=Gosudarstvennyj Ermitaž, p=ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)ɨj ɪrmʲɪˈtaʂ, links=no) is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It is the largest ...
in St. Petersburg
Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
. In 2002 the Galerie der Stadt Stuttgart opened a permanent exhibition of his work.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Consagra, Pietro
1920 births
2005 deaths
People from Mazara del Vallo
20th-century Italian sculptors
20th-century Italian male artists
Italian male sculptors
Italian contemporary artists
21st-century Italian sculptors
21st-century Italian male artists