Attilio Selva

Bust of Benito Mussolini

Attilio Selva (1888 – 1970) was an Italian sculptor, father of the painter Sergio Selva.

Biography

Born in Trieste, under the Austro-Hungarian Empire, from an early age he opted for irredentism. He studied at the Industrial School in Trieste, then moved to Milan and worked as a stonemason, then to Turin, where he was welcomed into Leonardo Bistolfi's atelier. Around 1905 he met and became friends with Felice Carena. In 1907 he won the Rome Prize in Trieste, so he moved to the capital.

He obtained a studio at Villa Strohl Fern and stays there until the late 1920s. He passionately studies ancient Roman sculpture, Renaissance sculpture, and Egyptian statuary. The solo exhibition of Croatian-born sculptor Ivan Meštrović at the 1911 Rome Exposition suggested Symbolist emotions to him. Among his allegorical-symbolic sculptures the most significant areː Ritmi, Velia of 1914 and Enigma of 1919. The latter work, exhibited at the 1921 Roman Biennale, is preserved in Rome at the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art.

After the Great War, a new artistic movement, called "return to order," spread. Selva is usually considered a forerunner of this artistic experiment, which moved in a Novecentist direction and proposed a "Michelangelo-like Italianism". He exhibited at the III Roman Secession (1915) and in 1918 at an international art exhibition in Zurich. In 1918 he made his mark at an exhibition at the Pincian Hill. In 1919 Attilio Selva traveled to Egypt and executed medals and portraits for King Fuad I. On March 29, 1932 he was appointed Academician of Italy, for the Art class.

Attilio Selva won in 1924 the national competition, announced by the Capitoline Administration, for five new fountains, to be placed in Roman squares. The best known is the Fountain of the Caryatids, in Piazza dei Quiriti, inaugurated in 1928.

The place is shaded, almost secretive, with a D'Annunzian flavor. From a low, circular basin, slightly elevated above street level and with a protruding rim, rises a baluster — adorned with protruding basins and leaves, from which spouts emerge — supporting a smaller basin. From the latter, water, with a veiling effect, reaches the larger basin below. Above are four caryatids, kneeling and naked, supporting with raised arms and head a third basin, in the center of which is a pine cone. The nudity of the caryatids was the subject of controversy.

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Boxer (Rome, Foro Italico)

Other works by Attilio Selva, in Rome: the monument to Guido Baccelli in Piazza Salerno, from 1921; the monumental and massive statue of St. Charles Borromeo, in Piazza Augusto Imperatore, from 1937, which recovers an ancient Baroque setting. For the Stadio dei Marmi at the Foro Italico he made the colossal statues the Javelin Thrower, the Boxer, the Discobolus, and the Fromboliere. He collaborated on the monument to the Bersagliere at Porta Pia. After the last war, he sculpted the bronze statue of Saint Eugene for the high altar of the Basilica of Sant'Eugenio.

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Monument to the Fallen Soldiers (1935)

In 1928, Attilio Selva made a Pieta for Tripoli Cathedral; the monumental statue of Guglielmo Oberdan, placed between the two allegorical winged figures Patria and Libertà and located in the Museum of the Risorgimento and Oberdan Memorial in Trieste (1931); the monument to Nazario Sauro in Capodistria (1934), destroyed during the war; and the monumental statue of Justice, in the courtyard of the Palace of Justice in Milan.

The 1935 Monument to the Fallen Soldiers in Trieste, built in collaboration with architect Enrico Del Debbio and dedicated to the Trieste volunteers who fell in World War I, was erected on San Giusto Hill at Remembrance Park and unveiled in 1935. Three soldiers support a fallen soldier, protected by a fourth soldier. The figures are 5 meters high, and the sculptural group rests on a base of white Istrian stone.

In Frascati he left two bronzesː the Redeemer and St. John the Baptist, in the church of St. John Bosco. The bronze group Death of St. Benedict and the cast silver antependium of the Glorification of St. Benedict, for the Abbey of Monte Cassino, he made in 1970, the year of his death.

Sculptor and art critic Antonio Maraini, recalled Attilio Selva forː "the prestige of technique". Several works by Attilio Selva were exhibited at the exhibition Roma Anni Venti in 2008.

Honors

• Civil Order of Savoy, Knight (awarded on September 15, 1970)

References

• Carrera, Manuel; Lisa Masolini (2018). Attilio Selva 1888-1970, Sergio Selva 1919-1980: dentro lo studio. Roma: Galleria Berardi.
• Sgarbi, Vittorio (1993). Scultura italiana del primo Novecento. Bologna: Grafis Edizioni,.
• Stefanelli Torossi, Lucia (1983). Gli artisti di Villa Strohl-Fern tra Simbolismo e Novecento. Roma: De Luca Editore.
• Vicario, Vincenzo (1994). Gli scultori italiani dal Neoclassicismo al Liberty. Lodi: Il Pomerio.