Giacomo Manzù

File:Монумент - panoramio (28).jpg (1977).]]

Manzù was born in Bergamo. His father was a shoemaker and sacristan. Other than a few evening art classes, he was self-taught in sculpture, and later became a professor himself. He started working with wood during his military service in Verona in 1928; later, after a short stay in Paris, he moved to Milan, where architect Giovanni Muzio commissioned him the decoration of the chapel of Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (1931–1932). In 1933 he exhibited a series of busts at the Triennale di Milano, which granted him national popularity. In 1933, he completed the reliefs for the Monument to the Brothers Calvi located in front of the city hall of Bergamo, a monument inaugurated by Mussolini and the poet Gabriele D'Annunzio. The following year he held a personal exhibition in Rome with the painter Aligi Sassu, with whom he shared a studio.[https://archivi.unimi.it/entita/IT-UNIMI-AUTHAPICE0001-0000011713_manzu-giacomo/ Manzù, Giacomo, Università degli Studi di Milano]{{Cite web |title=Aligi Sassu, great artist of the 20th century. Life, style, works |url=https://www.finestresullarte.info/en/ab-art-base/aligi-sassu-great-artist-of-the-20th-century-life-style-works |access-date=2025-04-04 |website=www.finestresullarte.info |language=en}}{{Cite web |title=Giacomo Manzù {{!}} Galleria Tonelli |url=https://galleriatonelli.it/en/project/giacomo-manzu/ |access-date=2025-04-04 |language=en-GB}}

In 1939 Manzù started a series of bronze bas-reliefs about the death of Jesus Christ; the works, exhibited in Rome in 1942, were criticized by the Fascist government and the ecclesiastical authorities. In 1940 he obtained a teaching position in the Accademia di Brera in Milan, but later he moved to the Accademia Albertina in Turin. During World War II Manzù moved to Clusone, returning to teach at Brera after the end of the conflict. He held his teaching position until 1954 when he moved to Salzburg, where he lived until 1960. Here he met Inge Schabel, a ballerina and his future wife, who was the model of a large number of his portraits and sculptures. He was commissioned in 1957 to design the central doors for Salzburg Cathedral, completed in bronze in 1959.Manzù Das Salzburger Dom-Tor, Verlag Galerie Welz, 1959 In 1964 he completed perhaps his most important work, the "Doors of Death" for St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, the first new doors in the cathedral in 500 years. That same year, he moved to Ardea, near Rome, in a locality now rechristened Colle Manzù in his honour.{{Cite web |title=SIUSA - Fondazione Giacomo Manzù |url=https://siusa-archivi.cultura.gov.it/cgi-bin/pagina.pl?TipoPag=cons&Chiave=17702 |access-date=2025-04-04 |website=siusa-archivi.cultura.gov.it |language=it}}{{Cite web |date=2024-09-03 |title=Giulia, la figlia di Giacomo Manzù: «Beveva champagne senza sosta fino all'alba. Bistrattò Marzotto (che non sopportava)» |url=https://www.corriere.it/cronache/24_settembre_03/giulia-la-figlia-di-giacomo-manzu-beveva-champagne-senza-sosta-fino-all-alba-bistratto-marzotto-che-non-sopportava-d29ba956-9ffa-4d80-a3df-e6bf8348dxlk.shtml |access-date=2025-04-04 |website=Corriere della Sera |language=it-IT}}

He created two sculptures in stiacciato relief at the Rockefeller Center on the former Italian building in the 1960s, one titled "The Immigrant" and the other "A Fruitful Harvest".{{fact|date=April 2025}} In 1977 he completed a "Monument to the Partisan" in Bergamo. One of his last works was a 6m-tall sculpture called "Mother and Child" which is situated in the gardens of the UN headquarters in New York City. Italy gifted the piece to the United Nations in 1989.{{Cite web |title=Mother and Child, Gift ID: UNNY007G |url=https://www.un.org/ungifts/mother-and-child |access-date=2025-04-04 |website=United Nations}}I[https://media.un.org/photo/en/asset/oun7/oun7551416 taly Presents Sculpture "Mother and Child" to United Nations]{{Cite web |date=2023-01-17 |title=Italy pays tribute to Manzù's sculpture at the UN: "May inspire our quest for peace" - Onu Italia |url=https://onuitalia.com/2023/01/17/italy-pays-tribute-to-manzu-sculpture-at-the-un-may-inspire-our-quest-for-peace/ |access-date=2025-04-04 |website=ONU Italia}}{{Cite web |last= |first= |title="Mother and Child" – Giuseppe Manzù (Italy - 1989) |url=https://www.un.org/en/visitor-centre-new-york/mother-and-child-%E2%80%93-giuseppe-manz%C3%B9 |access-date=2025-04-04 |website=United Nations}}

He was the subject of a famous photographic portrait by Yousuf Karsh and in 1968 his friendship with Pope John XXIII was documented in the book "An Artist and The Pope" by Curtis Bill Pepper.{{fact|date=April 2025}}

In the late 1960s, Manzù started to work also as scenographer.{{fact|date=April 2025}}

His works are displayed in prestigious museums and private collections throughout the world. Tasende Gallery inaugurated their first location in La Jolla, California on 1 June 1979 with a solo presentation of Manzu's work, attended by his wife Inge.

Although he was an atheist,"Giacomo Manzu; Atheist Sculpted Doors for Vatican". Los Angeles Times. 22 January 1991. Retrieved 17 May 2014. Giacomo Manzu, 82, Italian sculptor who created the bronze "Doors of Death" in St. Peter's in the Vatican. Often at odds with the Catholic hierarchy because of his atheism and his mocking figures of cardinals, Manzu was a close friend of Pope John XXIII, who prodded him to sculpt the mammoth doors dedicated in 1964. he was a personal friend of Pope John XXIII and had important liturgical commissions for the Vatican. In the United States, architect Minoru Yamasaki commissioned him the Passo di Danza (dance step) sculpture at the One Woodward Avenue building in Detroit.Zacharias, Pat (5 September 1999). [https://archive.today/20121208215908/http://info.detnews.com/redesign/history/story/historytemplate.cfm?id=165 Monuments of Detroit] Michigan History, Detroit News. Retrieved on 21 November 2007. He also carved the Nymph and Faun at Wayne State University's McGreagor Memorial Sculpture Garden.

His son Pio was an automotive and industrial designer. Giacomo Manzù died in Rome on 17 January 1991, aged 82.

• Gold medal: Italian Order of Merit for Culture and Art (1981)
• Lenin Peace Prize (1965)
• Knighthood: Order of Merit of the Italian Republic (1960)

{{reflist}}

• {{BBKL|m/manzu_g|band=31|autor= Ralf van Bühren|spalten=826–835}}

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• [http://www.ilovefiguresculpture.com/masters/manzu/manzu.html Masters of 20th Century Figure Sculpture]
• [http://www.saintpetersbasilica.org/Interior/DoorofDeath/DoorofDeath.htm Door of Death in St Peter's]
• Antonella Crippa, [http://www.artgate-cariplo.it/collezione-online/page45d.do?link=oln82d.redirect&kcond31d.att3=33 Giacomo Manzù], online catalogue [https://web.archive.org/web/20120402223047/http://www.artgate-cariplo.it/Portal-museo/page38.do?sp=page38&link=ln502&stu24.LanguageISOCtxParam=en Artgate] by Fondazione Cariplo, 2010, CC BY-SA.

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Category:1908 births

Category:1991 deaths

Category:Artists from Bergamo

Category:Italian atheists

Category:Italian contemporary artists

Category:Italian communists

Category:Recipients of the Lenin Peace Prize

Category:Academic staff of Brera Academy

Category:Academic staff of Accademia Albertina

Category:Recipients of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic

Category:20th-century Italian sculptors

Category:20th-century male artists

Category:Italian male sculptors

Category:Honorary members of the Royal Academy

Category:Recipients of the Italian Order of Merit for Culture and Art