Pericle Fazzini Biography
Pericle Fazzini (Grottammare, 4 May 1913 – Rome, 4 December 1987) was an Italian artist, sculptor and painter. He began his training in the workshop of his father Vittorio, a carpenter; thanks to the help of the poet Mario Rivosecchi in 1930 he moved to Rome, where he studied at the Free School of the Nude. In 1931 he won the competition for a monument to Cardinal Dusmet (which however he never built); in 1932 and 1933 he participated in the competition for the National Artistic Pensioner, obtaining a scholarship, which he won thanks to the high relief Exit from the Ark. In 1933 he exhibited with Alberto Ziveri and Giuseppe Grassi at the Dario Sabatello gallery; in 1934 he exhibited the Portrait of Anita in Paris which was purchased by the Jeu de Paume Museum. In 1935 he participated in the II Quadrennial of Rome, obtaining a prize for the high reliefs Danza and Tempesta. He exhibited again successfully in Paris and Rome and in 1938 opened his own studio in Via Margutta, where he remained for the rest of his life. Participates in the Venice Biennale with several sculptures (Portrait of Ungaretti, Young man declaiming, Young man listening). He participates in Corrente, a Milanese art magazine that brings together the main Italian artists and participates in the second exhibition of the movement. In 1940 he married Anita Buy, then left for military service in Zara, making drawings for the magazines Primato, Documento, Domus. Returning to Rome in 1943 he sculpted the Boy with the Seagulls; inspired by the war climate is Il fucilato. In 1947 he won the Turin Prize with the work Anita in Standing and took part in the Fronte Nuovo per le Arti exhibition, with Emilio Vedova and Renato Guttuso. In 1949 he won the Saint Vincent Prize with the work Sibilla and participated in the Twentieth-Century Italian Art exhibition at the MoMa in New York. In 1951 he held his first anthology at the Fondazione Premi Roma; in 1952 he exhibited in New York; he returned to the Venice Biennale in 1954, winning first prize for sculpture. In 1955 he began teaching at the Academy of Florence, while from 1958 until 1980 he taught at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. Between the end of the fifties and the sixties he worked on impressive monumental projects that were not always realised: portal of the church of San Giovanni Battista on the A1; Fountain for the ENI Palace in Rome, Monument for the Resistance in Ancona, Monument to Kennedy (never built; the sketch is in Grottammare, in the square that bears the artist's name). Since the 1940s, he was a regular visitor to the Artists' Mass in Piazza del Popolo in Rome, and a friend of its founder, Monsignor Ennio Francia. In 1961 he exhibited in Darmstadt; in 1962 in Düsseldorf, in 1963 the first of numerous exhibitions in Japan. In 1970 he began "the Resurrection" for the Sala Nervi in the Vatican, and contacts with Pope Paul VI led him to inaugurate his most famous work on 28 September 1977. Two important anthologies retrace his career: in Avezzano in 1983 and at the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in 1984. He died in Rome on 4 December 1987. Pericle Fazzini is among the greatest and most famous exponents of international sculpture. His works are preserved in the major private collections and in the most important museums in the world including the Hakone open air museum in Japan, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, the Tate Gallery in London, the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Momat in Tokyo and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Montreal. After his death there were numerous retrospectives dedicated to him and held in prestigious museums and public spaces, such as the Setagaya art Museum in Tokyo, the splendid setting of the Sassi of Matera, Villa d'Este in Tivoli and the Sacred Heart in Paris. Among his closest students Vito Pancella (1945-2005) and currently active Gino Giannetti.
