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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.〔(New York City Parks website )〕 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; 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, ''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.〔(Charles Atlas posing for Dawn of Glory, 1924. )〕 It was unveiled in Brooklyn's Highland Park on July 13, 1924.〔(Dawn of Glory ), from NYC Parks.〕 His ''Minute Man'' sculpture for the World War I memorial in East Providence, Rhode Island, is even more intimidating than the ''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, commissioned by Sicilian-Americans living in New York City, was for the town of Mirabella Imbaccari.〔(Monumento ai Caduti (Monument to the Fallen) ), from Mirabella Imbaccari.〕 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 Sicily in 1938, twenty years after the end of World War I. He modeled a bust of Italian engineer Guglielmo Marconi for the 1939 New York World's Fair, and later donated it to the Engineers' Hall of Fame.〔''Electrical Engineering'', vol. 72, iss. 12 (December 1955), pp. 1096-99.()〕 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 created commemorative medallions, including two sets of religious medallions for the Franklin Mint. Copies of his 1957 St. Francis of Assisi medallion for the Society of Medalists are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art,〔(St. Francis Medallion ), from Metropolitan Museum of Art.〕 the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,〔(St. Francis Medallion ), from Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.〕 and other museums. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Pietro Montana」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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