Giuseppe Mozzanica. La scultura

Removed from that cone of shadow into which its intimate coherence and the reserve of its protagonist threatened to relegate it, the artistic story of Meratese sculptor Giuseppe Mozzanica (1892-1983) is recounted here for the first time. His uncompromising love for reality, his dogged study of nature, and his total fidelity to truth constitute his salient notes: a true faith, as well as a way of looking. From his studies at the Brera Academy under the guidance of Giuseppe Graziosi, to his affirmation in the local sphere as a participant cantor of the Great War and sensitive portrait painter, to the recognition he won with the victory of two works-the Footballer and the Rower-in the competition for the Stadio dei Marmi in Rome, Mozzanica never deflects from his faith in a classically inspired beauty. Anatomical study, proportion, and harmony are his watchwords, applied to the popular reality of a still partly rural Lombardy.

Starting with the collection of photographic plates and prints, evidence of a method but also an extraordinary document of social history, the Mozzanica fund tells a secluded and courageous story, all on this side of the avant-garde. The war memorials scattered in many Lombardy municipalities, the funerary works - of which the city of Lecco, in particular, is very rich - and then the marbles, bronzes, and plaster casts, preserved in the Pagnano gipsoteca, are presented in the essays by Luciano Caramel, Lucia Gasparini and Serena Paola Marabelli and offered to the eye in the photographs by Alberto Lagomaggiore.