The Sculptor's Chisel
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Davide Calandra was born in Turin into a wealthy family. His father, besides his professional activities of lawyer and hydraulic engineer, was an archaeologist and a well known collector of ancient weapons.
I find his work absolutely stunning! Great inspiration to draw from, particularly with the Arthurian Lore. He displays a remarkable ability, and surety of hand. He’s extremely prolific in monuments and public works, including sacred works. He is absolutely one of my favorite 19th-century sculptures.
The subject of naturalism can stir a many heated debate. I will leave it up to the visitor to research this topic on their own. Regarding Calandra, there was a movement starting with Rodin to not be so slavish to realism. To create the figure with a more poetic touch, I believe was his aim.
Add this link to his museum: Worth a look
Born in Turin on 21 October. 1856 by Claudio and Malvina Ferrero. The cultural traditions of the family, with particular interests for art, and its economic, political and social prestige, allowed him, like his elder brother Edoardo, to freely support his personal artistic dispositions, even if the early and easy success, which contributed the fascination of a singularly gifted nature, concurred to distract him from the deepening of the expressive discourse, from a greater attention to cultural choices, and to encourage him in the search for the effect.
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Gipsoteca Calandra Savailgiano
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Scolaro of A. Balzico and O. Tabacchi at the Accademia Albertina of Turin, C., although he enrolled in Savoia Cavalleria in 1875, continued to work as a sculptor and followed his father and brother in the favorite archaeological research. In 1880 he presented himself for the first time to a public exhibition, in Turin, with the sketch in chalk The Vigils of Penelope, immediately well received: from this moment his artistic career developed with ever greater fortunes and public recognition; very few and rare were the reservations made by the critics, even if he could not tear the palm of a major Italian sculptor living to his friend and roughly the same age Leonardo Bisolfi.
(mostly sketches in plaster or terracotta) were marked by a worldly verismo, of the scapigliato type, whose character is denounced by the same titles: from the verghiano Tigre reale (marble, successfully exhibited in Monaco in 1883; , Church) to that cloister Fior celebrated with a sonnet by E. De Amicis (1884, the marble was bought by Umberto I, numerous replicas in different materials were also accepted in foreign collections). But soon the C. passed to a picturesque verismo on rural and rustic themes - sometimes historical - that did not substantially change the sketches of the previous way ( Ilcacciatore di frodo, 1886, bronze, Turin, Cravero and various replicas; ' Plow,1888, bronze, Rome, Galleria naz. of modern art); it was finally shelved - with each other roughly analogous to that of Bistolfi - for a symbolism of higher ambitions, to which the great celebratory sculpture seemed to offer the subject.
In 1885 C. had participated in competitions for the monument to Foscolo in Florence and Garibaldi in Milan, resulting in the award-winning artists. In 1889 he won the one for the Garibaldi Monument in Parma (made in bronze in 1893); in 1892 the one for the Monument to the prince Amedeo d'Aosta, beating closely, after a playoff, the Bistolfi (made in 1902 in Turin in the park of the Valentino, a Vittorio Emanuele II, fragment of the sketch, in bronze, is preserved in the Turin Sabauda Gall); in 1906 the one for the Monument to Zanardelli in Brescia, in bronze and marble, inaugurated with great resonance in 1909; and in 1907, together with E. Rubino, the competition for the Monument to General Miterin Buenos Aires, built in 1910. In 1908 he was commissioned the bronze relief with the Apotheosis of the House of Savoy, intended for the new Parliament hall in Rome, which was completed in 1912 and exhibited that year at the Amsterdam International. He gave the models of lire 2 and lire 1 coins, issued in the financial year 1913-14 (reproduced in bronze, are kept at the Mint of Rome). In 194 he was commissioned for the Monument to Umberto I in the Villa Borghese in Rome: the laying of the first stone occurred in that same year, but the monument (in bronze and porphyry) was finished by the Ruby after the death of C. opened only in 1926.
Meanwhile, the C., in addition to performing another remarkable number of works, especially portraits and funeral monuments and the whimsical equestrian statue The Conqueror,which can be considered his masterpiece (the sketch was exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1903, the bronze statue, from 1904, is located in the garden of modern art in Turin), became part of various commissions of competitions and committees organizing exhibitions in Italy and abroad (in 1884 he was already a member of the Turin exhibition committee, then participating in the organization of all major exhibitions in the same city); he covered a dense series of public offices (since 1893, when he was appointed a member of the Superior Council of Fine Arts), obtaining awards and honors from various European countries. In 1902 he was elected city councilor in Turin, first on the list of "pure" liberals. With L. Bistolfi he was among the founders (1902) and directors of the Turin magazine Modern decorative art, which played a very important role in the battles for "new art"; and he was also, exceptionally, an architect and decorator, planning, around 1890, his home in Turin, in Corso Massimo d'Azeglio 40 (now demolished), where death took him on 8 September. 1915.
This fruitful activity is not however impressed by the signs of a highly original personality: despite the fact that he divided the reasons of young artists committed to overcoming naturalism in the name of a modern symbolism, and declared to understand the monument in an architectural sense, with absolute coherence of the parts - program not always respected in practice -, his works, even the most organic and robust (especially the bas-reliefs that adorn some of the great equestrian monuments), are free from descriptive difficulties but can not get out of a rhetorical academy, here and there touched from the poetic bistolfiana of the atmosphere or aroused by exercises at the Rodin. So that he is held well within the traditional line of nineteenth-century celebratory sculpture and the innovative attitude of style is entirely fictitious.
Until the early nineteenth century both landscape and the human figure in art tended to be idealised or stylised according to conventions derived from the classical tradition. In the nineteenth century there was a trend towards representing things in a more realistic way. In Britain this was pioneered by John Constable who famously said ‘there is room enough for a natural painture’ (type of painting).
Naturalism became one of the major trends of the century and, combined with realism of the subject, led to impressionism and modern art. Naturalism is often associated with plein air practice (painting landscapes and other scenes from life out-of-doors).
In ancient Greece and Rome, the human form was the dominant subject in sculpture, and the artists of classical Greece achieved a high degree of naturalism in sculpting the human form. From the rigid archaic male figures, known as kouroi, of the sixth century B.C. to the naturalism of Classical Greece and Rome, the human form was considered the most respected subject matter for art.
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