E. Riccardi - Statue, Busto ritratto (Beethoven?) - 50 cm - Bronze

Bronze sculpture with the original patina by E. Riccardi. Large in size and spectacular details.
The mounting bracket is still present.
It is probably attributed to Eleuterio Riccardi, a well-known sculptor who executed bronze works of such importance. The bronze, according to initial analyses, presumably depicts Ludwig van Beethoven or another important illustrious figure.
Attributed to ELEUTERIO RICCARDI
Col Felice 1884 - Rome 1963;
sculptor and painter
Trained in Rome, in the circle of Giovanni Prini, where he learned the craft of sculpture, he first exhibited publicly as early as 1905, in the heyday of late Symbolism. Restless, discontent, attracted also to painting, he travels north on a journey begun in 1912 that brings him as far as Berlin, where, in 1914, he witnesses a memorable exhibition of Vincent Van Gogh. The works created between 1914 and 1918 stem from an attempt to fuse Van Gogh with Futurism, while preserving a form solidity entirely in the Italian tradition.
At the exhibitions of the Roman Secession, Riccardi appears in 1915 in a mixed room of Divisionists and Fauvism experimenters; in the 1916 edition with seven works, some of which enter the Olga and Angelo Signorelli collection. With a core of drawings labeled as “Futurist,” he is present at the National Exhibition of Black and White (Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome 1917). In 1918 (May–June) he organizes, with Mario Recchi, at the Roman Galleria dell’Epoca the Independent Art Exhibition, an important group show in which he displays seven paintings and six sculptures.
From 1921 to 1925 he is absent from Italy because he moved to London where he becomes the preferred portraitist of politicians, collectors, and nobles. There follow exhibitions at the Royal Academy, at the Leicester Gallery, and at the Goupil Gallery. He executes two monuments to Hon. Montagu for Bombay and Calcutta. A friend of poets and musicians, he paints the portrait of Master Alfredo Casella, molds portraits of the Poet Nicola Moscardelli, Bruno Barilli, Ferruccio Scattola, and carves in wood the portrait of Corrado Alvaro. In 1931, at the First Roman Quadriennale, he exhibits the marble Portrait of Mrs. Dettori and the plaster The Mother of the Hero. At the III Roman Syndical, 1932, he presents himself as painter and sculptor. At the II Roman Quadriennale (1935) he is present with Waiting and Maiden, two monumental works in marble and stone. In 1940 he holds a solo show in Milan. Painting still attracts him more during the years around the Second World War. In 1960 at the Rome Quadriennale he exhibits an abstract ceramic bas-relief in green. Of restless character, Eleuterio Riccardi has often destroyed his own sculptures so that it remains difficult to render a complete image of his work.