LUCIANO MINGUZZI ARTWORKS

Luciano Minguzzi, well-known sculptor and Italian engraver, was born in Bologna in 1911. He grew up under the artistic influence of his father Armando, also a sculptor , develops a passion for art and begins his training at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna. There, he studied engraving with Giorgio Morandi and sculpture with Ercole Drei , and attended Roberto Longhi 's art history lectures 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 Quadrennial of 1943, he won his first prize. Other notable awards include the 1946 Angelicum and first place ex aequo at the 1950 Biennale.
In the immediate aftermath of World War II, Luciano Minguzzi created the Monument to the Partisan and Partisan for her hometown. This work, located near Porta Lame, commemorates an epic battle between Nazi-fascists and partisans that took place in 1944. Made with cast bronze from an equestrian statue of Benito Mussolini, the monument represents two young men, one of them 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 concentration camp prisoners and anonymous victims of war. In 1953, he obtained third prize in the competition for the Monument to the Unknown Political Prisoner organized by the Tate Gallery in London.
In 1950, he won a competition for the creation of the Fifth Gate 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 presents a 1958 iron and bronze sculpture entitled Pas-de-quatre . An important assignment arrived in 1970 when he was entrusted with the creation 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.
Beyond 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, it was set up in Bologna at the Fondazione del Monte organized a posthumous anthological exhibition in his honour. Luciano Minguzzi died in Milan in 2004, and today rests in the family tomb in the Piratello cemetery in Imola. Luciano Minguzzi's art continues to be celebrated for its powerful expression of humanity and its profound sensitivity to the human condition.