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

Bronze sculpture with original patina by E. Riccardi. Large dimensions and spectacular details.
The fixing bracket is still present.
It is likely attributed to Eleuterio Riccardi, a well-known sculptor who created bronze works of such importance. The bronze, from early analyses, presumably depicts Ludwig van Beethoven or another important illustrious figure.

attrib. to ELEUTERIO RICCARDI
Col Felice 1884 - Rome 1963;
sculptor and painter
Trained in Rome, within the circle of Giovanni Prini, where he learned the craft of sculpture, making his public debut as early as 1905, in the late Symbolist period. Restless and dissatisfied, also drawn to painting, he journeys north in 1912 that takes him as far as Berlin, where, in 1914, he sees a memorable show by Vincent van Gogh. The works executed between 1914 and 1918 arise from an attempt to fuse van Gogh with futurism, while preserving a form that remains robustly Italian in character.
At the exhibitions of the Roman Secession, Riccardi appears in 1915 in a mixed room of divisionists and Fauvist experimenters; in the 1916 edition with seven works, some of which enter the Olga and Angelo Signorelli collection. With a nucleus of “futurist” drawings, he is present at the National Exhibition of White and Black (Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome 1917). In 1918 (May–June) he organizes with Mario Recchi in Roman Galleria dell’Epoca the Independent Art Exhibition, an important group show in which he exhibits 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 are successive shows at the Royal Academy, the Leicester Gallery, and the Goupil Gallery. He creates two monuments to Hon. Montagu for Bombay and Calcutta. A friend of poets and musicians, he paints the portrait of Maestro Alfredo Casella, shapes portraits of the poet Nicola Moscardelli, Bruno Barilli, Ferruccio Scattola, and carves in wood that of Corrado Alvaro. In 1931, at the First Roman Quadrennial, he exhibits the marble Portrait of Mrs. Dettori and the plaster The Mother of the Hero. At the Third Roman Syndicate Exhibition (1932) he presents himself as painter and sculptor. At the Second Roman Quadrennial (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 most in the years around World War II. In 1960, at the Rome Quadrennial, he exhibits an abstract low-relief in green ceramic. Of restless character, Eleuterio Riccardi often destroyed his own sculptures, so it remains difficult to render a complete image of his work.