After the family lost their prune orchard in the stock market crash of 1929, they moved to Farmersville, California, where Clemente worked managing a ranch.

[1] At the end of World War II, while serving as a naval officer in Hawaii, Renzi worked in a lumberyard, where he began to experiment with woodcarving.

After he had graduated in 1947 and was working as an accountant for Standard Oil, a fellow student urged him to attend a lecture by art educator Henry Schaefer-Simmern.

[6] Following their return to the United States, Clement completed his first major commission, The "Fourteen Stations of the Cross", for a Christian Brothers retreat center in St.

[2] Clement offered a large tapestry, Eat, Drink and Be Merry, for sale at the gallery at an audaciously high price, not fully wanting to part with it.

[10] In a brochure for the 1960 exhibit, Sculpture Center's founder, Dorothea Henrietta Denslow [Wikidata] commented, “These little people with their long noses, big eyes, and chubby figures live in a far-away land.

Through his sculpture, we watch them as they work and play in close harmony, concerned only with the miracles of their simple world.”[citation needed] In 1963 the couple moved to Dorothy's hometown of Fresno, to raise their daughter in a quieter environment.

[1] Renzi had built a studio in his backyard in Fresno's Fig Garden neighborhood, and travelled periodically to cast his larger bronze works through the lost wax process in ItalyItaly and Spain.

Renzi continued to receive almost uninterrupted commissions for large bronzes for area hospitals, banks, churches, schools, colleges, the Fresno library, entertainment centers, civic buildings, parks, malls and businesses.

In 1969, one of Renzi's sculptures, Brotherhood of Man, drew attention to his work when a group unsuccessfully contested its placement at the Fresno County Courthouse, asserting that its subject matter violated the separation of church and state.

[14] Renzi's style sometimes resembles the work of Ernst Barlach, reflecting the influence of German expressionism in his training,[2] and has also been compared to folk art.

Later works assumed a more rounded, friendly aspect[5] (P 13) with cherubic children making a frequent appearance, although he also experimented with other kinds of forms, such as a series of bird-like boats with abstract human passengers, and with weightier themes, such as heroic figures from the Old Testament.