ETTORE COLLA ARTWORKS

Ettore Colla was an Italian sculptor and painter and one of the main protagonists of Italian abstractionism. He was born in Parma in 1896. From 1913 he attended the Academy of Fine Arts of Parma and in 1918 he enlisted in the Bersaglieri corps and took part in the First World War, being seriously injured. In 1923 he moved to Paris where he frequented the ateliers of important sculptors including Bourdelle, Brancusi and Laurens . In 1926 he returned to Italy and moved to Rome where he opened his own studio. He began his activity as a sculptor, initially influenced by the Novecento group and by Arturo Martini.
In 1930 he exhibited at the XVII Venice Biennale and in 1936 he obtained the chair of ornamental modeling at the artistic high school of Naples. His first research into abstract art began in 1941. In 1950 he founded, together with Mario Balocco, Alberto Burri and Giuseppe Capogrossi the group Origine, an abstract art movement which later became a gallery in Rome that expressed the his points of view through the periodical Arti Visive.
The sculpture of this period is the most relevant of all his artistic production and is characterized by the use of recovered elements, mainly in iron, for the creation of abstract although sometimes allusive assemblages.
In 1955 he participated in the VII Quadrennial of Rome and, in the same city, two years later holds a solo exhibition at the La Tartaruga gallery. In the following years he participated in numerous national and international collective exhibitions.
In 1964 he participated in the XXXII Venice Biennale with a room set up, which marked the official recognition of the artist's work. In 1966, together with Capogrossi, Fontana, Leoncillo, Pasmore, he founded the magazine QUI contemporary art, published by Editalia.
Ettore Colla died in Rome, in his home in Viale Parioli , December 28, 1968.