BIOGRAPHY
Antoniucci Volti shortened his surname from the original, Voltigero. Born in 1915 in Albano, Italy; he became a sculptor, draftsman and engraver.
He inherited his passion of working with raw materials from his stone cutter father, who eventually moved the family to Villefranche sur Mer, France.
In 1928 Volti enrolled in the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs in Nice. Winning a gold medal for two polychrome bas-reliefs, in 1932 he moved to Paris to study under Jean Boucher at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts, aged only 15. He served in WWII and was held prisoner of war in Bavaria. In poor health, he returned to Paris, only to find his studio and works destroyed, thus obliging him to begin anew. In 1947, he started exhibiting in various Parisian Salons, and at the Brussels and Antwerp Biennales. In 1957 the Rodin Museum in Paris held a retrospective of his art. His works are in the permanent collection at the Musée Nationale d’Art Modern, Paris. He died in Paris in 1989.
Volti was inspired by the form of the female body, which he strove to magnify, sublimate and glorify. He adhered to a daily practice of drawing live models, seeking to convey the unique contours of the body as precisely as possible. A carnal sensual beauty emerges from the curves and lines creating the silhouette. Embracing humanist traditions, Volti is one of the most important Late Modern sculptors to have worked figuratively in the 20th century.
