Portraits from Trieste. Sbisà donation to the Revoltella Civic Museum

The eight sculptures by Carlo Sbisà (1899-1964), donated by his daughters Marina and Paola, represent the artist's transition from painting to sculpture and his choice to reinterpret his artistic production of paintings of the 1920s and 1930s and translate it using a new medium. After 1945, the artist slowly abandoned painting to concentrate on terracotta and ceramic. His sculptures are consistent with his unstoppable vocation for harmonic shapes and archaic tones. The solid modelling and closed, compact shapes reveal a persistent link with the European artistic movement “Return to order”. The portraits, created from different materials (porous sandstone, glazed terracotta, terracotta covered in majolica), reveal a more intimate aesthetic dimension compared to previous works, quite appropriately considering the familiarity of the artist with the people he portrayed. The sculptures have been restored to their original beauty by Maria Teresa Tito, from the Civic Museums of History and Art.