69 - Adolfo Wildt

Adolfo Wildt (Italian, 1868-1931) Portrait Bust of Nicola Bonservizi, 1925 bronze with verdigris patina height: 21 1/2 in. (54.6 cm) This lot is located in Philadelphia. Overall: 21 1/2 x 14 x 16 in. (54.6 x 35.6 x 40.6 cm) Provenance: Private Collection. Lot Note: The present sculpture depicts the Italian Nicola Bonservizi (1890-1924), a Parisian correspondent for the publication Il Popolo d’Italia, and the founder of the Paris Fascio and the Italian daily L’Italie Nouvelle. In 1924, Bonservzi was critically wounded by the anarchist Ernesto Bonomini, eventually dying of his wounds. The following year, Adolfo Wildt created a marble version of this sculpture for the headquarters of the Popolo d’Italia, where it was inaugurated during a ceremony attended by Bentio Mussolini, who had been a friend of the journalist. Wildt exhibited the marble monument along with a bronze version at the first exhibition of the Italian Novecento, where it received wide critical acclaim. “The energetic, almost martyrdom-oriented head of Bonservizi,” (Giorgio Nicodemi, Adolfo Wildt, Milan, 1929, p. 10) was, according to Ugo Ojetti, “by far the most admirable…of the many masks and busts exhibited by Wildt in these years.” (Ugo Ojetti, “La scultore Adolfo Wildt,” Dedalo, December 1926).