Venanzio Crocetti Artwork valuations, appraisals and auction estimates

Venanzo Crocetti (1913 - 2003) was born in Giulianova, Abruzzo in 1913. Already at an early age he had shown great artistic talent when he drew with charcoal on the walls of his house and in the street. Read the full biography

Venanzo Crocetti (1913 - 2003) was born in Giulianova, Abruzzo in 1913. Already at an early age he had shown great artistic talent when he drew with charcoal on the walls of his house and in the street. At twelve years old he was orphaned and in extreme poverty. In 1928 he moved to Rome where he trained and worked as a restorer in the Vatican laboratories. At just 17 years old he exhibited his sculptures in public for the first time at the National Exhibition of Animals in Art. In the 1930s he obtained the National Prize of the Accademia di San Luca and the National Exhibition of Florence. The success earned him an invitation to the 1934 Venice Biennale. From 1934 onwards he was regularly invited to the Rome Quadrennials and the Venice Biennale, where, in 1938, he won the Sculpture Grand Prize. His interest in the themes of sacred art found its maximum expression in the 1950s: in the chapel in the Basilica of Sant'Eugenio in Rome, in the new Basilica of San Leone Magno in Rome, in the new Basilica of San Giovanni in Bosco in Rome and wins the international competition for the creation of one of the three doors of St. Peter's Basilica. In 1946 he began his academic activity when he was entrusted, due to his clear fame, with the chair of sculpture, which had belonged to Arturo Martini, at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice. The Door of the Sacraments for St. Peter's Basilica was completed in the 1960s. In 1970 he held his first solo show in Japan and in the same years the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg dedicated a permanent room to him where nine bronzes and ten works on paper were exhibited. In 2002 the Crocetti Museum was inaugurated which houses the works created over a period of over seventy years of activity.