Alfredo Pina, Peasant Sharpening His Scythe, Bronze With Brown Patina

"Peasant sharpening his fake", an important bronze sculpture with brown patina depicting a man standing sharpening his scythe. Signed on the terrace "A Pina" bears the stamp of the foundry "A. Valsuani wax lost". Old edition font. After brilliant studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, crowned by the National Grand Prix of sculpture in 1904 - the equivalent of our Prix de Rome, Alfredo Pina spent three years in Rome, before moving to Paris in 1911. Rodin notices one of his sculptures, and asks him to join his studio as a practitioner; he stayed there until the death of this one in 1917. He frequents the circle of the Italian artists, integrates himself in Montparnasse in the artistic environment for the years '20. Supported by the founder Valsuani, he presents a significant number of works in 1920, at the Allard Gallery. This exhibition was a great success, as well as that of the Society of Italian Artists, which he later organized in 1929. Attracted by the landscape of the Nivernais region, he bought a house in Mesves-sur-Loire, then the quarries of stone Malvaux nearby, to honor his orders of monuments to the dead of the Great War; he realizes that of Mesves, which takes again a bronze exposed in 1920, Pain. He returned to Paris, then Italy, where he took part in a universal contest launched by Mussolini, which he won with a project of Monument to Dante. It will be his great work, but it will never be realized. Back in France in 1929, he stayed in Paris for a while, then moved permanently to Mesves with his wife. He participates in exhibitions in Nevers, performs busts of friends or acquaintances who are also his patrons. He died in 1966, forgotten the Paris scene, in destitution. The Mesves studio backdrop, acquired by the State, will be deposited in the museum of La Charité-sur-Loire in 1971. Pina, both in his portraits and in the monumental sculpture, is obviously influenced by the themes of Rodin, but his plastic vocabulary is very personal to him. A catalog raisonné is in preparation.