Riders at the Middelheim Museum

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Umberto Mastroianni, born on September 21, 1910, in Fontana Liri, Italy, was a renowned Italian abstract sculptor. Following World War II, he dominated the market for municipal monuments honoring the Italian Resistance, which he had actively participated in. His dynamic and towering creations in steel and bronze gained international recognition, with his work featured in museums and sculpture parks from Los Angeles to Tokyo. Mastroianni hails from a family that breeds talent, particularly surprising given their rural roots in Fontana Liri. His father, Vincenzo, was a master engraver who passed down the craft through generations; his mother, Luisa Conte, was a cousin of American actor Richard Conte. One of her grandsons, Marcello, would later work with clay in his uncle's studio, recalling how Mastroianni created a snow Nativity scene for the family. As a young teenager, Mastroianni traveled to Rome to study at the San Marcello art school and assist his uncle Domenico in his religious sculpture studio in Via Margutta. Two years later, he moved to Turin to complete his apprenticeship with sculptor Michele Guerrisi. Mastroianni thrived in Turin's vibrant art scene, forming friendships with second-wave Futurists like Luigi Spazzapan, who became a mentor to the young artist. Painter Filippo De Pisis secured Mastroianni's first solo exhibition in Genoa in 1931. Despite his Futurist sympathies, Mastroianni remained resolutely figurative throughout the Thirties, sculpting life-size bronzes in a classical style akin to Marino Marini. It was not until 1942, as Italy's war effort faltered, that he finally adopted abstraction, developing a style characterized by Cesare Brandi as "Cubist-Futurist." Mastroianni's models were influenced by Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2 and Boccioni's unfinished sculptural experiments. His first significant public commission was the Turin Monumento ai Caduti in 1945-47, which embodied the values of the Resistance through solid energy and broken circles. Mastroianni's neo-Futurist shift was cemented by a notable Parisian exhibition in 1951. Later exhibitions at the Venice Biennale (where he won the sculpture prize in 1958), New York (1964), Florence (1981), and Tokyo (1989) solidified his international reputation. Although he produced numerous gallery-sized works across various media, Mastroianni was happiest when creating large-scale bronze or steel pieces, such as the towering Cuneo Resistance monument. In 1989, he received the first Praemium Imperiale for sculpture. During World War II, he actively participated in the Italian resistance movement. His final work was a pair of massive steel gates for Turin's Teatro Regio opera house, inaugurated in December 1994. Mastroianni resided in Turin until 1960, when he moved to Marino, in the Castelli Romani east of Rome. He settled into a 16th-century palazzo that had once belonged to poetess Vittoria Colonna, Michelangelo's muse. Towards the end of his life, Mastroianni turned to poetry and wrote occasional columns on art for the Rome daily Il Messaggero. In March 1987, he donated 27 works, including a series of polychrome reliefs, to the Italian state. These can be seen at the Galleria di arte moderna in Rome. Umberto Mastroianni was a large man with expressive hands and an emphatic manner of communicating his ideas. In moments of creative tension, he would jump into his beloved Ferrari Dino and drive around the Castelli, even after turning 80.