Giacomo Manzu (1908-1991)

Buste di Inge

Details
Giacomo Manzu (1908-1991)
Buste di Inge
stamped with raised signature and foundry mark on the back 'MANZÚ N.F.M.M.'
bronze with golden brown patina
Height: 36½in. (92.7cm.)
Cast in 1967; unique
Provenance
Adriani Manfredi Bellini, Monte-Carlo (acquired from the artist, circa 1971)
Exhibited
Florence, Galerie Idea, Manzú, Sept.-Oct., 1971, no. 5
Florence, Galerie Idea, Manzú, Sept.-Oct., 1975, number unknown
Monte Carlo, Bienale International des Antiquarias, Jeweleries, et Galeries d'Art, July-Aug, 1991, no. 9
Rome, Istituto italo americano, Fifty Years of the Works of Giacomo Manzú, May, 1995, number unknown

Lot Essay

In 1954 Manzù was invited to the International Summer Academy in Salzburg. His friend Friedrich Welz engaged Inge, a young girl from a local dance school, to act as the sculptor's model.

[Manzù] found himself in the presence of someone who
embodied precisely what he wished to shape and express...
Neither tall nor of the fragile elegance that characterizes
so many dancers, Inge combined radiant health with the
particular grace that the study of classical dancing lends
to all bodies...But it was the noble beauty of her regular
features which especially attracted Manzù; the fine straight
nose, the almond-shaped eyes, the conspicuously delineated mouth... (J. Rewald, Manzù, Greenwich, 1967, pp. 64 and 67)