Vittore Magelli, Teenager, C.1930., Painted Plaster Sculpture, H. Cm. 145

Vittore Magelli
Modena, 1911 - 1988

Teenager, c.1930.

Painted plaster sculpture, h. cm. 145

The work proposed here is perhaps the most iconic ever created by the Modena sculptor Vittorio Magelli. The sculpture, a plaster painted to simulate terracotta, depicts a naked girl with her head turned downwards, almost a declaration of intent of the twentieth-century and intimist instances of the well-known artist.

Magelli, trained in Modena at the local Art Institute under the influence and guidance of Giuseppe Graziosi, will move to Rome at the beginning of 1930 thanks to the victory of the Pensionato Poletti for painting, with a four-year duration. Here he will meet Mafai, Sciopione, he will be influenced by writers such as Campana - with his Canti Orfici - and Ungaretti, he will let himself be fascinated by the cultural ferment of the capital. And it is precisely in Rome that he will obtain his first success with the exhibition at the Quadrennial in 1931 with the sculpture Nudo di Bimba, later better known as Adolescente, a sculpture that will procure him numerous positive critical reports, so much so that it becomes one of the subjects most iconic of his production as - precisely - in the sculpture proposed here which differs from the first for an even greater dimension (145 cm. against 130 cm.)

In the slender figure, the psychological qualification with the little girl caught in a moment of silent isolation is striking; the perfect relationship and proportion of the limbs and their very slight movement which give life and character - one could say soul - to the statue.

The theme of the female nude will return several times in Magelli's production as - for example - in 1949 with the creation of a series of drawings of female nudes preparatory to the Standing Woman, a figure marked in the body by fatigue.

A bronze version, slightly smaller than ours, is on permanent display in the Assicoop/Unipol Collection in Bologna.

Bibliography:
- Vittorio Magelli (1911-1988), Comune di Modena - Museo Civico d'Arte
- I classici italiani. Vittorio Magelli, Roma, Piperno Editore
- Vittorio Magelli (1911-1988), Modena, catalogo della mostra, 1996, Franco Cosimo Panini Editore