Luciano Minguzzi biography

Luciano Minguzzi, a well-known Italian sculptor and engraver, was born in Bologna in 1911. Raised under the artistic influence of his father Armando, also a sculptor, he developed a passion for artwork and began his training at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna. There, he studied engraving with Giorgio Morandi and sculpture with Ercole Drei, and attended art history lectures by Roberto Longhi at the University. Thanks to a scholarship, Luciano Minguzzi had the opportunity to stay in Paris and London, exhibiting for the first time in 1933. His works were well received, and at the Roman Quadriennale of 1943, he won his first prize. Other notable awards include the Angelicum of 1946 and the first place ex aequo at the 1950 Biennale.
In the period immediately following the Second World War, Luciano Minguzzi created the Monument to the Partisan and the Partisan Woman for his hometown. This artwork, located near Porta Lame, commemorates an epic battle between Nazi fascists and partisans that took place in 1944. Made with bronze melted from an equestrian statue of Benito Mussolini, the monument represents two young people, one of whom is armed, in a moment of great naturalness.
During the 1950s, he developed a more dramatic and expressionist style, producing a series of sculptures inspired by prisoners of concentration camps and the anonymous victims of war. In 1953, he won third prize in the competition for the Monument to the Unknown Political Prisoner held by the Tate Gallery in London.
In 1950, he won a competition for the creation of the Fifth Door of the Milan Cathedral, a project he completed in 1965. In 1962, he participated in the exhibition Sculptures in the city, organized by Giovanni Carandente in the context of the V Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto. For the event, he presented an iron and bronze sculpture from 1958 entitled Pas-de-quatre. An important commission came in 1970 when he was entrusted with the realization of the Door of Good and Evil of St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican, a project to which he dedicated seven years of intense and passionate work.
In addition to sculpture, Luciano Minguzzi also dedicates himself to the art of the medal, creating for example the 500 lire silver coin of San Marino from 1974. In 2012, on the occasion of the centenary of the artist's birth, a posthumous retrospective exhibition was set up in Bologna at the Fondazione del Monte in his honor. Luciano Minguzzi died in Milan in 2004, and today rests in the family tomb at the Piratello cemetery in Imola. Luciano Minguzzi's artwork continues to be celebrated for its powerful expression of humanity and for its deep sensitivity to the human condition.