Libero Andreotti

Libero Andreotti ( born June 15, 1875 in Pescia, † April 4, 1933 in Florence ) was an Italian sculptor.

Life

At the age of eight to seventeen years he worked in a blacksmith shop in Lucca he met then Alfredo Caselli and the poet Giovanni Pascoli, who introduced him to the artistic and cultural concerns. An uncle took him to work in Palermo, in the Landron library. There he was hired as an illustrator of the socialist weekly newspaper " La battaglia ".

Disappointed by the island environment, he returned to Tuscany to Florence, where he continued the work as an illustrator, cartoonist and ceramist.

Later in Milan, he began to devote to the smaller dimensions of the sculpture. Help and support he received from the art dealer Grubicy, who recognized his talent and brought him to the Biennale of Venice and then to Paris.

The stay in Paris was important, he allowed him to take off his provincialism and acquire new technical skills. With the outbreak of the First World War, he had to return to Italy.

He completed a deep and beneficial friendship with the critic Ugo Ojetti, who sent him into the greatest art centers of northern Italy.

In 1922 he received the first major order ( the memorial to the fallen of Roncade), followed by work on the monuments of Saronno, at the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence, on the triumphal arch of Bolzano.

The last years of his life he spent in Florence, where he was inspired by the city's cultural milieu.

He is buried in the cemetery of Porte Sante, San Miniato al Monte.

Influence

In the 1980s, the town of Pescia acquired a significant amount of plaster casts Andreotti, who had served as the foundation for his work. They form the Gipsoteca Libero Andreotti, which is housed in the premises of the old town hall.

His birth town of Pescia taught in 1992 in Palagio a museum, which is stocked with a total of 230 plaster casts of his works.