Arturo Martini

He was literally overwhelmed by commitments: great monuments and commemorative works for courthouses, churches and universities.

Examples include the great bronze at La Sapienza University in Rome and the memorial to the aviator Tito Minniti.

He writes for example: "La scultura un'arte è da n*gri e senza pace" (sculpture is a black and unquiet art).

Martini worked with many materials (clay, wood, plaster, stone, especially marble, bronze, silver) but never moved far from figuration, although he was able to model abstract forms, as his atmosfera di una testa (vibrations of a head) of 1944 testifies.

He exercised great influence on later Italian sculptors such as Marino Marini, Emilio Greco, Marcello Mascherini, Pericle Fazzini, and his student Fiore de Henriquez.