Alessandro Monteleone Biography
Alessandro Monteleone was born in Taurianova in 1897 and was a sculptor. However, in recent years he has dedicated himself mainly to painting, a discipline he had already practiced as a young man, creating over three hundred works including canvases and monotypes. In 1920, he participated in the Calabrian Exhibition of Modern Art in Reggio Calabria, sending some plaster casts and pictorial works and appearing in the catalog as a painter. In 1922 he presented three plaster casts at the exhibition, Mastro Peppe, Portrait and Sketch of Medal.
Monteleone lived in Rome, a city where he moved in 1920, joining Mistruzzi's studio. In the capital he became professor of sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in via Ripetta, after having taught at the Academy of Naples. Since the early 1920s he has participated in the main national exhibitions, such as the Mostra Amatori e Cultori di Belle Arti in Rome in 1923, '26, '27 and '29; the Interprovincial Fascist Fine Arts Trade Union Exhibition of Rome in 1929, '30, '31, '32, '33, '35, '36 and '37; the Interprovincial Exhibition of the Fascist Fine Arts Union of Reggio Calabria in 1934, with a personal room; the Exhibition of Italian Artists in Budapest in 1935; the 3rd Trade Union Art Exhibition of Calabria in Catanzaro in 1936; the Venice Biennale in 1936, with a sculpture; in 1940, with a solo exhibition that included eighteen works; and in 1942, with a sculpture. He also participated in the Rome Art Quadrennial in 1931, '35, '39, '43 and in 1951/'52 with two bronzes, Portrait and Fragment, and two waxes, Portrait of a Boy and Dead Bishop, and in 1956/ '57.
His major works include panels on the facade of the Savings Bank from 1953; the Altarpiece and Altar of the Madonna della Consolazione in the Sanctuary of the Hermitage in 1964; a marble bas-relief that summarizes the "Fasti of Reggio and Calabria" at Palazzo Foti, headquarters of the Provincial Administration; the Stele of Hagia Sophia Alexius in 1967; a large bronze Fastigium in the Church of San Domenico in Soriano in 1958; the Altar of San Rocco in Palmi in 1963. Outside of Calabria, he created works such as Saint Joseph and the adolescent Jesus in the Church of Corpus Domini in Milan in 1930, sculptures in the urban cemetery of Monza, a monumental fountain called Diana in Amatrice in 1936, and works in the Istituto Femminile San Giovanni Battista e San Giovanni Evangelista in 1935. In Bari, he created the panels for the Via Crucis and The Meeting with the Mother in the Church of San Nicola, decorative bronze panels in the Palazzo della Posted in 1934, and the bronze Redeemer in the Church of Dalmine, Bergamo in 1937. Additionally, he created the Monument to John XXIII in Loreto and three bronze doors for the Basilica of Manila in the Philippines in 1959. In the United States, he created a large statue of the Immaculate Conception in Illinois.
