PIERO CATTANEO www.pierocattaneo.it

Biography Piero Cattaneo. Construction of the form

Piero (Pierantonio) Cattaneo was born on 2 December 1929 in , the last of five children. His father Damiano was a skilled worker at the Società Orobia of Bergamo, his mother Teresa Ferrari supported and encouraged her son’s natural inclination towards music and art. During primary school, profitably attended under the tutelage of the teacher Paolo Benedetti, who discerned a marked sensitivity for drawing in the boy, he received recognition for his artistic work from the Bergamo city council. In order to satisfy his father’s wishes, he then enrolled in the Filippo Corridoni industrial‐technical school in Bergamo, distinguishing himself in “mechanics” and “technical drawing”. In the same period he frequented the studio of the painter Giovanni Bressanini. In July 1947 he was admitted to the di Belle Arti of Bergamo. This educational experience under the astute direction of was a time of great enthusiasm and creative stimulus for the young Cattaneo. Under the guidance of the Ferrara painter ‐ and Gianni Remuzzi in the plastic and shaping section ‐ he learnt and practised in the anatomical study of bodies and in construction of the painting field, and began to take note of the studies and artistic experiments made in Europe during the difficult years of the second world war. In 1948 the Commissaria Carrara thought him worthy of an Honourable Mention and the “G. B. Agliardi” award of 500 lire. At the end of 1949 his awareness of having achieved a certain artistic mastery, and reasons of an economic nature, prompted him to leave the courses at the academy and find his first job at the celebrated Istituto Italiano d’Arti Grafiche of Bergamo. Here he began his profession as an illustrator, which he never abandoned throughout his long career. He achieved notable results, and was distinguished as one of the most important Italian illustrators for children, better known under the pseudonym Picca/Pikka, derived from the joining of his own name Piero with his wife Francesca’s nickname, Kikka. He began regularly visiting Milan, then the catalysing centre of the most innovative artistic research at a national level. He became, unbeknown to his parents, one of Wanda Osiris’s Boys, young and promising future actors and dancers of the Italian stage. In 1950 and 1951 he took part in the renowned exhibitions of held at the Angelicum in Milan. He went to Sardinia as the guest of a dear friend, Sergio Berizzi, who died prematurely, and fell in love with the culture, the Nuragic art and the unpolluted nature of the island, from then on becoming his adopted land. He left his parents’ house and the “studio” set up in his father Damiano’s workshop in via Broseta no. 115, to move into his first real studio in via San Bernardino no. 33. In December 1952 he held his first solo exhibition, with his painter friend Mario Signori, at the

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Rotonda Gallery in Bergamo, directed by Nino Zucchelli, where he presented six sculptures, five paintings and three woodcuts.1 In 1953, on the occasion of the first big Italian exhibition on Picasso after the war, held at the Palazzo Reale in Milan, at the invitation of Gioventù Studentesca the young Cattaneo gave a talk with his friend Claudio Nani, expressing “his personal interpretations of Picasso’s art in brilliant and concise form, reviewing the various periods of the artist’s frantic activity and noting in it a constant adherence to the times and the events that shook the first half of this century:”2 “Picasso looks, feels, suffers, works, expresses, as a genius, the time in which we live.”3 In 1954 he left his job at Arti Grafiche and moved to a new studio in piazza Pontida no. 32, where he completed his first art commissions. Through the architect Franco Nosengo he made the figure of Christus resurgens for the facade of the Strona cemetery (now in the province of Biella), a life‐size sculpture in artificial stone ‐ white cement and white Carrara marble chippings. He also worked on the decoration of some rooms in shops and restaurants in the centre of Bergamo. In the same year he took part in the Caserma dei Vigili del Fuoco’s competition for high reliefs in via Codussi, and was commended with praise for the model‐group presented with the motto “Salve” / “Hello”. In 1954 he enrolled in the Cineclub Bergamo ‐ membership no. 0923 ‐ beginning a journey through the world of film that he was to continue by attending the “Gran Premio Bergamo Internazionale del Film d’Arte e sull’Arte”, conceived and directed by Nino Zucchelli in 1958. He continued to attend assiduously even when from 1971 the festival moved to San Remo, not without controversy, and changed its name to the “Mostra Internazionale del Film d’Autore”. In October 1955 he produced the scenery for Sonnambula by Vincenzo Bellini for the Teatro Donizetti’s “Teatro delle Novità” autumn festival of lyric opera, an experience that reinforced his love of music and theatre cultivated from when he was a boy.4 The following year he presented a new solo exhibition at the della Torre Gallery in piazza Vittorio Veneto: “Piero Cattaneo 1955”, with six sculptures, two glass sculptures and fourteen drawings.5 The critic Tito Spini recognised him as having a pre‐eminent place among the city’s young artists, “won by his specific background, exceptional technical skill and controlled style;”6 his friend the painter Alberto Vitali sent his greetings and best wishes to “Piero, incomparable friend.”7 On 25 April 1956 he married Francesca Lorandi, teacher of foreign languages; an intense and lasting relationship from which Ludovica, Johanna, Andrea and Marcella were born.

1 Sculptures: 1 Tersicore / Terpsichore, 2 San Cristoforo / St Christopher, 3 Il cane / The Dog, 4 Il toro ferito / The Wounded Bull, 5 Una donna grassa / A Fat Woman, 6 Richiamo / Appeal; Paintings: 1 Figura che beve / Figure Drinking, 2 Il tavolo rosso / The Red Table, 3 Il pesce / The Fish, 4 Ambiente veneziano / Venetian Room, 5 La lucerna / The Lantern; Woodcuts: 1 I mietitori / The Reapers, 2 I mungitori / The Milkers, 3 Gatti in amore / Cats in Love. 2 Vivace dibattito su Picasso a Gioventù Studentesca, in ‘L’Eco di Bergamo’, 15 November, p. 3. 3 Archive paper. Picasso, 1953. 4 In 1937 he made his debut in the children’s choir for Bizet’s Carmen performed at the Teatro Donizetti; mezzo soprano Gianna Pederzini and scenery by the Marches painter Dante Montanari. 5 Sculptures: 1 Autoritratto / Self portrait, 2 Dormiente / Sleeper, 3 Torso romantico / Romantic Torso, 4 Il toro / The Bull, 5 La vacca / The Cow, 6 L’uomo e la bestia / Man and Beast; Glass sculptures: 1 Gallo /Rooster (garden sculpture), 2 Vetrata scultura n. 1 / Glass Sculpture No. 2; Drawings: 1 Grande testa / Big Head, 2 Studio per il toro / Study for the Bull, 3 Nudo n. 1 / Nude No. 1, 4 Nudo sdraiato / Reclining Nude, 5 Testa equestre / Equestrian Head, 6 Studio per La vacca / Study for the Cow, 7 Torso orizzontale / Horizontal Torso, 8 Gallo / Rooster, 9 Nudo n. 2 / Nude No. 2, 10 Nudo n. 3 / Nude No. 3, 11 Nudo n. 6 / Nude No. 6, 12 Testa di toro decorata / Decorated Bull’s Head, 13 Piccolo toro / Small Bull, 14 Testa d’uomo / Man’s Head. 6 Tito Spini, Luigi Scarpanti e Piero Cattaneo alla galleria della Rotonda e della Torre, in ‘L’Eco di Bergamo’, 28 March, p. 3. 7 Archive paper. Letter from Alberto Vitali addressed to the Galleria della Torre in 1956.

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He planned to move to a new house at the foot of the Maresana hill on the edge of the city of Bergamo, so built “La Kikka” in via Silvio Pellico, assisted by the architect Franco Nosengo. He conceived part of the roofing of the external walls in brick, probably influenced by the architectural ideas of the great Finnish architect Alvar Aalto. The lights are in some places framed by solid, vertical, wooden elements while the main source in the facade, intended to provide double height light to the living room and rooftop loggia, has a geometrical progression in neoplastic style.8 Cattaneo did not restrict himself to studying the layout of the interiors but also designed most of the furniture and light sources in the house. He also enlisted the Pesaro sculptor Nanni Valentini, probably met through his artist friend Ulrico (Schettini) Montefiore, to make the chimney breast, the brazier surface of the fireplace and the vase‐container complement in porcelain stoneware. In 1957 he joined the Gruppo Bergamo as the youngest artist in the group, unanimously regarded as one of the most promising. After a first official presentation in January at the Gallery of the same name, also named after the city, in via XX Settembre 79 ‐ 1st floor, the Gruppo, led by the critic Tito Spini, held a major exhibition in Milan at the San Fedele Gallery. Alongside the painters Mario Cornali, Egidio Lazzarini, Raffaello Locatelli, Trento Longaretti, Erminio Maffioletti, Giuseppe Milesi, Rinaldo Pigola, Luigi Scarpanti and Alberto Vitali, note was made of the two sculptors Elia Ajolfi and Piero Cattaneo, “who presents two interesting groups in wood and a self portrait in gilt bronze, of an archaic and precious style, and knows how to learn from woodworm holes and the corrosion of metal.”9 In 1958 Piero and Francesca left their temporary home in via Broseta 67 to move permanently into the new one in via Silvio Pellico 20. The building is divided into two floors: the ground floor set up as a studio with a double height section and the first floor residential. The young artist’s interests now turned to the complex process of casting in bronze. He tried out his first open air castings with impressions of vegetable elements. He fulfilled numerous commissions taking him into very different spheres: from the “Sci d’oro Reggiani” ski trophy (1958‐1959), to the “Sibella” burial monument of 1960 for the Bergamo civic cemetery, made in association with the architect Guido Colombo and the engineer Alberto Von Wunster. In March 1961, with his brother Mansueto, he registered the “Recreational‐educational toy based on synoptic tables, to easily learn the reading, writing and composing of words, for use in kindergartens and primary schools” at the technical patent office, demonstrating his interest in the world of childhood that was to continue and persist in the field of illustration. He completed the impressive monument dedicated to the brothers Levo and Duccio Reggiani for the evangelical cemetery of Bergamo (1961‐1962) and made the renowned and coveted “Valli Bergamasche” trophy, one of the most prestigious awards in international motorcycling, dedicated to the memory of the Reggiani brothers. The artist turned once again to the Battaglia foundry in Milan to cast the trophy;10 in the meantime in his own studio he was setting up the first lost‐wax casting

8 The tribute to the great architect was then clearly expressed outside by the presence next to the facade of three big birches, typical trees of Finland. 9 Marco Valsecchi, Undici bergamaschi, in ‘Il Giorno’, 22 March 1957, p. 11. 10 For the 16th ‘Valli Bergamasche’ Cattaneo made, as listed in a handwritten note of 20 May 1964: 2 wax models (small and medium) of the trophy sculpture, 2 drawings of the base, 1 model in plaster ‐ medal and preparatory drawings; 1 plaster model with Bergamo view for the back of same; delivered 7 medium trophies in bronze including casting‐retouching‐finishing on the cast item personally done by the artist; delivered 13 small trophies including casting and finishing as above.

3 furnace in Bergamo and in the entire province. Building the furnace and perfecting a technical process able to meet his formal and constructive needs took a long time to complete, with complications that cost him four years of casting work. In 1967 he made the first one‐off bronzes, made without recourse to post‐casting welding of the elements, showing a now attained technical mastery. He presented this new production in Milan in 1969 in a solo exhibition at the Cortina Gallery, introduced by Franco Russoli. It was a critical and public success. In the same period he devoted himself to making windows for the chapel of the della Neve in Foppolo (upper Val Brembana), commissioned by the surveyor Alberto Piastri. He thus turned to a technique he had already experimented with in his glass sculpture when he was young, and which from now on he matured linguistically with greater creative freedom. He made stained glass windows for the Suore Poverelle di Villa d’Ogna (Bergamo), for the Istituto Don Luigi Palazzolo and the Suore del Sacro Cuore both in Bergamo. In 1971 he won first prize for sculpture in the “Michelangelo d’Oro” international review of sculpture and painting in Massa with his work “Ipotesi di struttura III” / “Hypothesis of Structure III” of 1970. In 1973 he won the competition for the production of a work in bronze for the new Salvo D’Acquisto intermediate school in Pontoglio (Brescia). He made the medal for the 4th centenary of the birth of Michelangelo Merisi for the Circolo Numismatico Bergamasco, contrasting the recto featuring Caravaggio’s “Sick Bacchus” with the charm of his own specific linguistic architecture on the verso. In 1974 he took part in the Premio Brunellesco in with his work “Pagina Aperta” / “Open Page”, winning the first prize for sculpture, which he followed in 1975 with second prize for sculpture at “Presenze 53 Fiera Internazionale” in Milan. In the same year he was nominated active member, in the Class of Literature and Arts, of the Ateneo di Scienze Lettere ed Arti di Bergamo, formerly the Accademia degli Eccitati, a prestigious cultural institution whose origins date back to 1642. The year 1976 began with the opening of an important and fascinating exhibition at Milan’s Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnica. Giuseppe Marchiori, a person who has marked the history of Italian art criticism and culture, presented him in a monograph published by Rino Fabbri Editore of Milan. A sincere relationship was established between the two, made up of respect and understanding, even when they were involved in difficulties with the publisher: “Dear Cattaneo, don’t worry about the Fabbri story. I can say that I had almost forgotten it... The most important thing is something else: our work. You, sculptor, I, critic. And with a clear conscience. Despite my age I can say that I keep myself efficient, in the breach, at my post. Nothing else counts. And you, too, dear Cattaneo, don’t think anything more about it. I am pleased rather with the news you send me. I will do all I can to be present on 10 January in Bergamo on the occasion of your exhibition...”11 On 10 January 1978 the Lorenzelli Gallery in Bergamo presented a solo exhibition on Cattaneo more than 25 years after the last one held by the artist in his hometown: the success was repeated. In 1980 he tried his hand at a new expressive medium, preparing the studies for the complex decoration of the conch and apse in the church of Albegno (Treviolo, Bergamo). The big , nine metres in height and seven and a half wide, was

11 Archive paper, Correspondence. Giuseppe Marchiori, San Marco 411 A, , 28 December 1977.

4 completed in 1982. It was recalled by Don Luigi Pagnoni: “Of our own time the frescoes by Piero Cattaneo are to be noted for the stirring ‘Resurrection’ in the apse of the Albegno parish church, an exceptionally demanding work because of its size and thematic intensity.”12 He also made the altar, the ambo and the baptismal font for the same church in 1981. He worked tirelessly in the field of liturgical furnishings throughout the 1980s, a sphere in which Cattaneo managed to express the spiritual concept with all its emotional charge without diminishing his linguistic research: the shrine for the church of the Fondazione di Santa Maria Ausiliatrice in Bergamo (Gleno), of 1981, the refectory and ambo for the church of the Matris Domini monastery of 1985, and those for the church of Sant’Andrea in Sforzatica (Bergamo) of 1987. He studied the difficult relationship that ties man to his earthly and temporal condition with the same involvement, leaving proof of this in numerous funeral monuments that stand out because of their expressive freedom and participatory intensity; in a letter sent to the technical artistic commission of the Bergamo civic cemetery, the sculptor firmly expresses his position in exemplary fashion: “As is my ethical practice, I have always made myself the commitment to renew the iconography of the funeral monument, from the Sibella tomb of 25 years ago to the more recent Von Wunster‐ Redaelli tomb; likewise on this occasion the Carrara‐Ruggeri tomb represents a new element in the panorama of cemetery monuments; I thus ask the commission for the chance to fully express my aesthetic intuitions without altering its integrity.”13 He carried out numerous works in the Bergamo city cemetery and all are distinguished by their iconographic singularity and evocative power, like the work dedicated to his friend Nino Zucchelli (1994), which is extremely innovative, also in the temporal nature of its original forms able to transmit a message of study and meditation. In 1985 Cattaneo took on some of his most demanding projects for the natural environment. These were works once again made in a single cast, which, given their dimensions, was already a sign of great peculiarity and expertise. In “Concetto di liberalità” / “Concept of Generosity” of 1985‐1986, a sculpture conceived for the green area at the Credito Bergamasco bank, the bronze surfaces take on a dynamism previously unknown in Cattaneo’s career. There is a freedom of movement of the masses that seems to want to contradict the actual nature of the material; with “Opus pro Dino Sestini” / “Opus for Dino Sestini” (1985‐1986) this aspect is even more accentuated, something certainly determined by the specific destination of the sculpture dedicated to the figure of the industrialist Dino Sestini and his great passions, which made him a leading figure in the fields of motor racing and speed‐boat racing. Alongside these prestigious commissions, for the first time Cattaneo took on the making of a fountain, ‘Urbana III’ / “Urban III” (1985), intended to furnish the “courtyard‐square” of a new housing estate in Borgo Palazzo, Bergamo. The work in bronze and stainless steel polished to a mirror finish, commissioned for social housing buildings ‐ which was then a fairly sensational event ‐ is now unfortunately abandoned to neglect and vandalism. The idea of ideally opening the plastic mass to expand it to the infinite in space prompted him at that point to dedicate himself almost exclusively to this study of the reflected form ‐ the steel reflects the gold of the bronze in a

12 Don Luigi Pagnoni, L’Alleluja di Pasqua nell’arte bergamasca, in ‘L’Eco di Bergamo’, 22 April 1984, p. 5. 13 Archive paper, Letter addressed to the Commissione tecnico‐artistica of Bergamo cemetery, 13 May 1983.

5 repetition of continuous forms ‐ in the early 1980s; the first sculpture in mirror polished bronze and stainless steel, “Riflesso oltre” / “Reflection Beyond” is from 1982. In 1989 Cattaneo decided to present his more properly graphic work to the public for the first time: La ricerca del segno. Segni e disegni dal 1949 al 1989; Marco Lorandi presented it recalling that “Cattaneo’s graphic excursus offers us the chance to examine his artistic commitment... a kind of personal diary of a writer who gives the most heterogeneous reader the secret pages‐sheets of his aesthetic work.”14 His skill and surety of aim emerge very naturally right from his first youthful attempts. Bergamo was once again the setting for the sculptor’s works in 1992. The ancient 15th‐ century cloister of Santa Marta, owned by the Banca Popolare di Bergamo and situated in the heart of the Centro Piacentiniano, was set up for the first time as an exhibition venue. Rossana Bossaglia, who for years had followed the artist’s career, wrote an important essay on him. The link between the two was sealed, so to speak, by “Civetta Superstar” / “Owl Superstar”, a bronze made especially by the artist for the exhibition dedicated to her, “Civetteria”, held in the Bibliofili Gallery in Milan in 1978. It was an exhibition based on a historical fact, as Bossaglia herself writes: “...during the night before my birth, an owl sang continuously on the windowsill of the house (and my mother was very dismayed by this, forgetting to interpret it, as one ought on such occasions, as the homage of the bird of Minerva), this is why, the further away my birth becomes, the more I would like to establish the meaning of the omen.”15 In the meantime he was involved in numerous commissions, both for private homes and important businesses: from the sculptural work for the Cremona Arvedi group in 1992 to “Rhapsody” of 1995 for Hewlett Packard of Stezzano, now Freni Brembo, “a story that timelessly crosses the experience of human industry...combining in the same expression plastic motives of the past with technological elements of our present, creating a whole of great charm and intellectual tension.”16 The sculptor dedicated himself to two commissions with great passion and drive through to the end: the “Tavolo solare” / “Solar Table” of 2003, in a private collection, and “Remembering” from the same year, made to celebrate the Ferretti company’s centenary. The artist’s last big anthological exhibition was held in 2002. In the evocative 19th century Teatro Sociale in Bergamo Alta, the salient moments of a life that made art the instrument for expressing his own time succeeded one another, punctuated by the limpid herons that glide down from above. Piero Cattaneo died in Bergamo on 10 June 2003, leaving testimony of his long and significant career in the numerous works held in private collections, public institutions and Italian museums.

14 Piero Cattaneo la ricerca del segno. Segni e disegni dal 1949 al 1989, presentation by Marco Lorandi, exhibition catalogue (Bergamo, Centro Culturale San Bartolomeo, 13 April ‐ 4 May 1989), Bergamo 1989. 15 Civetteria, 33 artisti +1 per Rossana Bossaglia, Pistoia 1983. 16 Paper attached by the author to the work ‘Rhapsody’, 1995.

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