Arrigo Minerbi


Arrigo Minerbi was an Italian sculptor.
, Milan.

Life

Born to a Jewish family in Ferrara on 10 February 1881, he took a course in arts and crafts before working as a ceramicist, designer, teacher and stucco-artist in Florence, Ferrara and Genoa.
Aged 35 he moved to Milan where, in 1919, he put on an exhibition of his work to the critics and the public in the Galleria Pesaro. That exhibition also toured successfully to the 1920 Regionale di Ferrara, back to Milan in 1922 before going to the Primaverile Fiorentina that year, and finally being invited to the Venice Biennale, where he exhibited his silver group "Last Supper". On 14 June 1925, in the Parco delle Rimembranze at Bondeno, he unveiled his "La Madre" as a monument to the dead of the First World War, for which he was later made an honorary citizen of Bondeno, though this was revoked by the promulgation of the Fascist race laws and only re-conferred in 2004.
Minerbi was the favourite artist of Gabriele D'Annunzio, for whom he produced "Luisa", a portrait of D'Annunzio's mother and the bust of Eleonora Duse: both these portrait busts were exhibited at the Vittoriale degli Italiani of Gardone Riviera. In 1937 he was commissioned to produce the first of five bronze doors for Milan Cathedral, but he was subsequently forced into hiding at Gavazzana by racial persecution and only completed the doors in 1948.

Works