Alimondo Ciampi - Hen And Chicks

bronze, cm 42 x 43 x 44
Signed and dated on the base: "Alimondo Ciampi Firenze 1925"
Provenance: Austria, private collection Exhibitions: Milan, Galleria Pesaro, 1928, no. 27
Bibliography: Individual exhibition of R. FOCARDI, G. C. VINZIO and A. CIAMPI, Milan, Bestetti & Tumminelli, 1928, no. 27

"Alimondo Ciampi, a sculptor born in San Mauro a Signa in Tuscany, has been described as 'one of the best temperaments of an artist produced in these times'. 
At the Scuola Libera del Nudo, he was linked to the major representatives of the post-Macchiaioli and Symbolist Tuscan season. The sculptures of the early 20th century are directed towards pure attention to the real. The modelling of 15th-century Tuscan sculpture is revealed in Ciampi's conspicuous forays into animalier subjects, certainly influenced by Giambologna's Florentine Grotta degli animali.
Chioccia e pulcini (Chickens and Chicks) was exhibited as a solo exhibition at the Galleria Pesaro in Milan in 1928. A bronze group dated 1925, with a mother hen surrounded by a brood of chicks, it is an allusion to the "very human" moment of motherhood, a theme that the sculptor has often addressed in a human version, and here treated with a synthetic and vibrant handling of the masses.