Lugano
Arturo Martini (1889–1947) was an important Italian sculptor, active between the First and Second World Wars. He attended the ceramics school in Faenza and later studied sculpture in Treviso. In 1909, while in Munich, he became a pupil of A. Hildebrand, and in 1911 he moved to Paris. After the First World War, Martini joined the “Valori Plastici” group in Rome and worked as a teacher at the School for Artistic Industries in Monza. The artist died suddenly in Milan in 1947.
His extensive body of work is characterized by immediate plasticity, an extraordinary joy of invention, and complete mastery of all technical processes and materials, including stone, bronze, terracotta, and ceramics. From his early works, which featured a stylized primitivism, his artistic exploration evolved toward a deep simplification of volumes, eventually taking shape in tightly structured and highly intense sculptural forms. With a remarkable sense of style, he drew inspiration from a wide range of historical forms—archaic, Etruscan, Romanesque, and Baroque—while never losing the originality of his invention or the vitality of his forms. His small ceramic groups are also particularly noteworthy, rich in narrative spirit and at the same time of great decorative value.
Arturo Martini’s extraordinary creativity goes beyond the constraints of celebratory themes. He embraced a classically modern approach, experimenting with fragmented rhythms that define and at the same time fracture space. His works are characterized by rugged and austere forms that avoid conventional rhetoric, instead intertwining and merging into sculptural groups that radiate intense and monumental beauty.
