The hands of a sculptor
Novello Finotti began his training at the Academy Cignaroli in Verona, enrolling when he was only fifteen years old. He spent time in the workshop of Nereo Constantini, learning the physical demands of stone and metal. His early years were marked by a quiet focus on religious themes, winning a prize at the Exhibition of Sacred Art in Assisi when he was nineteen. By 1963, his work moved into the foundry, specifically through his contact with the Boncini foundry in Verona.
His practice involves a heavy, tactile engagement with materials like white Carrara marble, Portuguese pink marble, and Belgian black granite. He also works with brass, bronze, gilded bronze, and copper. These materials allow him to shape figures that feel both solid and strangely light. His sculptures often use simple forms—an egg or a bird’s nest—to suggest larger ideas about life and death. The surfaces he creates can be smooth or textured, pulling the viewer toward small, human details like a finger or an arm.
A career in stone and bronze
The movement of his work has taken him from the local academies of Italy to galleries in New York and across Japan. In 1964, he held a solo exhibition at the Armory Gallery in New York, and later, in 1977, he returned to the city for a show at the Iolas Jackson Gallery. His presence at the Venice Biennale in 1966 and 1984 brought his figurative style to a wider audience. He has also exhibited in places like Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Tokyo, and Hong Kong.
Much of his work carries a sense of narrative through symbols. Some pieces reference literature or mythology, while others feel more personal and surreal. His sculptures often inhabit a space between reality and fantasy, where human shapes meet imagined worlds. Notable works from his long career include:
- My Three Loves, 1971
- Homage to Kafka, 1972
- Valentino, 1977
- Juliet’s Little Bed, 1977-82
- Homage to Sand, 1978
- Annunciation, 1978
- Federica’s Nests, 1983
- Please Don’t Tickle Me, 1991-94
- Elevation, 1991-1997
Works for the church and the city
Finotti has completed significant commissions that integrate his sculpture into architecture. In the Basilica di S. Giustina in Padua, he worked on the facade, creating three bronze portals, eighteen portraits, and four symbols of the Evangelists in marble. His work also reached the Vatican, where he created the gilded bronze decoration for the altar of Pope John XXIII in St. Peter’s Basilica. He also sculpted Saint Maria Soledad in marble for an external niche in the same basilica.
In Grado, he built a monument to the poet Biagio Marin in 1990. His life and work remain split between Sommacampagna and Pietrasanta. He continues to use the weight of bronze and the coolness of marble to explore themes of rebirth and the everyday.
