Le collegiali

In the small terracotta work "Le collegiali", Arturo Martini tackles the problem of the sculptural group that had interested him in his youth, but that, if one excludes the numerous works with to figures, he had seldom faced in his mature years. The ten boarders, grouped to form an inward facing circle, witness with their warm embrace the friendship and curiosity that links girls of that age group. The robust plastic concept of this singular human barrier, if on one hand renders the complicity between the young girls, standing side by side as if they were columns, on the other leaves the viewers' desire to know what is happening in the centre of the circle unsatified. Martini would return to this subject three years later in 1930, in "Collegio" that echoed this circular motif, but in an accentuated centripetal force given mostly by a greater insistence on the gazes of the female students, supported by their slightly bent over bodies. As a unique edition, "Collegio" was presented in Florence at his solo exhibition in Palazzo Ferroni at the beginning of 1932, in which for the first time the sculptor decided to exhibit a group of his small works in terracotta. As well as the work of the Boschi Di Stefano collection, which has the number "20" impressed on the underside of the base, various editions of "Le collegiali" (1927) exist, both in terracotta (one can be seen in the Museo Civico di Treviso) and in majolica ceramic, produced by the company La fenice in Albisola in 1936; finally, a reproduction in bronze forms part of the collection owned by Alberto Della Ragione in Florence. The terracotta would be acquired by Antonio Boschi in 1935, from Galleria Milano. [Massimo De Sabbata]