Pietro Montana (June 29, 1890 – July 6, 1978) was a 20th-century Italian-American sculptor, painter and teacher, noted for his war memorials and religious works.
Biography
He was born in
Alcamo,
Sicily, the third of six children of Ignazio and Marianna Montana. The family emigrated to the United States in 1904, and settled in
Brooklyn, New York City. As a teen, he apprenticed under a photographer, then started his own photography studio in the family home. He attended night classes for six years at the School of Art,
Cooper Union, studying under George Thomas Brewster and graduating in 1915. He also studied at the
Mechanics Institute.[1]
He made a spectacular professional debut with Fighting Doughboy, the winner in a 1919 war memorial design competition sponsored by the Unity Republican Club of Brooklyn. Rather than a conventional passive figure, he modeled an aggressive soldier with clenched fist, ready to throw a punch. The lifesize sculpture was unveiled in Heisser Park on November 20, 1921. Bronze replicas are in North Arlington, New Jersey; and Alliance, Ohio. Zinc replicas, cast by the J. W. Fiske Architectural Metals Company of New York City, are in
Riverdale, New Jersey;
Suffern, New York;[2] and elsewhere.
That same year he unveiled a traditional
Beaux Arts sculpture for Brooklyn's Freedom Square Park – Victory with Peace – a classical
nike (winged goddess), but one who holds aloft an olive branch, instead of a sword.
His next commission, The Dawn of Glory, probably is his most famous work. It depicts the soul of a dead soldier wrapped in an
American Flag ascending to heaven. The sculpture is a one-and-one-half-lifesize nude, and the bodybuilder
Charles Atlas (born Angelo Siciliano) posed for it.[3] It was unveiled in Brooklyn's Highland Park on July 13, 1924.[4]
His Minute Man sculpture for the World War I memorial in East Providence, Rhode Island, is even more intimidating than Fighting Doughboy. The physicality of the soldier is striking – the model may have been Charles Atlas, again – and the knife he clutches (now broken) along with his slashed trousers and wounded thigh suggest that he has just emerged as victor from bloody hand-to-hand combat. The monument was dedicated on July 30, 1927.
His last large-scale war memorial was for the town of
Mirabella Imbaccari, Sicily, and was commissioned by
Sicilian-Americans living in New York City.[5] It features a bronze, one-and-one-half-lifesize
centurion – nude, but for belt, helmet and cape – who protects and comforts a clothed woman collapsed at his feet. Monumento ai Caduti (Monument to the Fallen) was unveiled in 1938, almost twenty years after the end of World War I.
Montana co-founded the Leonardo da Vinci School of Art in the late-1920s, where he taught for several years. In the 1930s, he taught at the Roerich Academy of Arts. As artist-in-residence at
Fordham University from 1947 to 1952, he taught painting and sculpture, and executed a number of school commissions. Most notable among these are the fourteen
Stations of the Cross bas-relief panels in the University Chapel, which feature half-lifesize figures carved out of white oak.
He exhibited at the
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts — 1919, 1920, 1924, 1930–1936, 1943–1948; the
National Academy of Design — 1918, 1919, 1921, 1931 (Gold Medal for Orphans); the Allied Artists of America — 1932–1949 (Gold Medals 1942 & 1949); and elsewhere.[9]
He was elected an associate of the
National Academy of Design in 1968, and an academician in 1970. He was also a member of the
National Sculpture Society and the Allied Artists of America.
He received the Daniel Chester French Medal for Religious Sculpture, the Allied Artists of America Award, the
Medal of Honor of the Catholic
Fine Arts Society and the award of the
National Academy of Design.
Personal
He became a naturalized American citizen in 1921. He married Alfrieda Kramer on April 3, 1930, and they lived in Brooklyn, and later Manhattan. The couple moved to
Rome, Italy in 1962, where they resided until Alfrieda's death in 1975. Montana returned to the United States and lived with a niece in Bayville, New York.
Fighting Doughboy (bronze, 1919–21), Bushwick-Ridgewood World War Memorial, Heisser Park, Myrtle & Knickerbocker Avenues, Brooklyn, New York, Giles Pollard Greene (1888–1941), architect.[11]
Fighting Doughboy (zinc, circa 1923), Riverdale Public School, Pompton-Newark Turnpike, Riverdale, New Jersey.[13]
Fighting Doughboy (bronze, 1924), Soldiers' Memorial, Borough Hall, 3 Legion Place, North Arlington, New Jersey.[14]
Fighting Doughboy (zinc, 1926), Wanaque War Memorial, Borough Hall, Wanaque, New Jersey.[15] Instead of a clenched fist, the doughboy has a grenade in his right hand.
Fighting Doughboy (bronze 1922 casting, repaired 2001), Weybrecht family plot, City Cemetery, Alliance, Ohio.[16]
Victory with Peace (1921), Freedom Triangle War Memorial, Myrtle & Bushwick Avenues, Brooklyn, New York, William H. Deacy, architect.[17]
Dawn of Glory (1924), Highland Park War Memorial, Jamaica Avenue & Cleveland Street, Brooklyn, New York.[18]
Minute Man (1927),
World War I Memorial, Taunton Avenue & Wheldon Street, East Providence, Rhode Island.[19][20]
Monumento ai Caduti (Monument to the Fallen) (1938), Palazzo Biscari,
Mirabella Imbaccari, Sicily, Italy.[21]
Religious works
Head of Christ, Civic Library S.Bagolino,
Alcamo,
Sicily
Statuette of St. Francis of Assisi and Three of His Brethren (1940).[22]
Fourteen Stations of the Cross (bas-relief, white oak, 1947–52), War Memorial Chapel, Fordham University, New York City.[24][25]
Statue of Blessed Mother Therese Couderc (1953), Convent of Our Lady of the Cenacle,
Lake Ronkonkoma, New York.[26]Therese Couderc (1805–1885) was canonized as a saint on September 26, 1970.
Mark Twain– Washington Irving Memorial Tablet (bas-relief busts, bronze, 1925), Brevoort Hotel, SW corner of Fifth Avenue & 9th Street, New York City.[29][30] Twain and Irving, at different times, occupied a house at 21 Fifth Avenue.
Orphans (miniature, bronze, 1931),
National Academy of Design, New York City.[37] Won a Gold Medal at the 1931 National Academy of Design Annual Exhibition.
Cal Snyder, Out of Fire and Valor: The War Memorials of New York City, (Bunker Hill Publishing, 2005).
ISBN1-59-373051-9
Jennifer Wingate, Sculpting Doughboys: Memory, Gender and Taste in America's World War I Memorials, (Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2013).
ISBN1-40-940655-5[4]