On October 15th, 1964, Giacomo Manzł, born in Bergamo in 1908, moved to Campo del Fico, a tuff plateau placed between Colli Albani (Alban Hills) and the sea, just opposite to the ancient acropolis of Ardea. The sculptor tells his relationship with Ardea with the following words: "I was born in the North ... then I came down to Rome through Porta San Pietro. And I was working and going around, I was walking towards the sea and I arrived here in Ardea. It was like opening a window on the space, on the light ... In Ardea I had a new birth ... No one has to bother about taking me away when the time comes, because I want to be buried in this place. The Manzł Collection, born under initiative of the Manzł Friends Committee in 1966 and inaugurated in 1969, was donated to the State in 1979 and opened to the public in 1981. Responsible of the Manzł Collection is at present Marcella Cossu.
The largest group of works kept in the Museum belong to the years between 1950 and 1970, period of maturity of the artist, in which many of the themes born from the very beginning, in the 30s of the last century, are reproduced and rearranged. The Collection has a few good examples of the initial period, including the bronze bas- relief Adam and Eve, of 1929. The archaisms of the early years are left by the artist who returns to the values of feeling and daily life in the soft plastic of the first wax small heads, begun in 1934. The Portrait of Mrs Birolli and the David, both of 1937, are examples of the new theme which hinges on the study of the effects of light on the matter. The small bronze bas - relief entitled Dance Step of 1927 is the first element of a series about dance, a subject on which Manzł will return in the 40s and develop in the 50s with all around sketches, drawings and sculptures. In 1954 the encounter with Inge Schäbel, a dancer who poses for him at the Salzburg Sommerakademie and becomes the companion of his life. The creation of several sculptures on the theme of the dance is precisely determined from the encounter with Inge.
The Ardea Collection retains a substantial core of Inges portraits (five sculptures in bronze, between 1960 and 1966, and a large selection of works such as graphic drawings and engravings). They portray Inge in the different issues of the Lying woman and Sitting woman whose ebony versions, respectively of 1967 and 1968, can be found in the Museum. Manzł describes his Lying woman as follows: "You must look at the work from behind. I wanted to depict the woman as suspended between two pillows, like a bridge in a precarious balance, supported, more than by the pillows, by the vitality of the flanks, emphasized by the light garments.
In the male portraits the psychological investigation of the faces is more intense: the artist investigates the nature of the subject through a grammatical breakdown of the face structure. With a few simple traits he is able to represent the smiling humanity of Pope Giovanni XXIII, the concentrated expression of his friend, the painter Giorgio Morandi, the hard and decided look of the movie director John Huston.
For the theme of lovers, born in 1965, Manzł describes the design as follows: "By means of the close embrace in motion of the two lovers, I wanted to achieve the unity of two masses that even penetrate each other to form a whole, like the image of a rock mass that is not inert but a concentration of power ... I am not religious in the sense that the Church gives to the word ... by these works, I have devoted myself to showing how much beauty is in two people who love each other Here's what it is religious in myself". The Ardea Collection retains seven models in bronze on the lovers theme, including two big mergers.
At the Biennale di Venezia of 1948, the first bronze cast of the Child on the chair was exhibited. This work was then perfected by Manzł up to the final version of 1955 preserved in the Collection. This latter work represents the maximum spatial correlation between the structure of the body and that of chair. In the course of the time, the subject evolves towards the portrayal of daughter Giulia, sitting on a fanciful high chair, the Giulia on the chair, of 1966. The chair, without the figure, becomes, starting from the 60s, the artist's favourite subject, often in life-size sculptures. The Collection houses two beautiful compositions of the Bergamo artist focused on this theme, including Chair with vine branch and pear, of 1966.
In 1939 Manzł addressed the topic of violence and war, with a series of bas-reliefs on the theme of the Crucifixion and Deposition, representing the Dead Christ next to a German General and a priest, approach which did not fail to arouse effects in the ecclesiastical and political environments. In the Ardea Collection the Bas-relief of Christ with General of 1947, like the Bas- relief with a Skeleton, of 1947 - 66, stay to confirm the validity of an intensely message felt by the artist and shown later-on in several times: "I remade this series in 1947, because I always seemed as topical this campaign for fighting against militarism, personified by myself in the General, inflated with stupid and criminal self-conceit. His antagonist, the Christ, personifies the mankind, all of us, and primarily those who have suffered and are suffering.
The Ardea Collection also houses the sketches of the entire doors created by Manzł for the Salzburg and Rotterdam Cathedrals, respectively The Door of Love, of 1955 58 and The door of Peace and War, of 1968. Of The Door of Death, made for the Basilica of San Pietro in Vaticano in 1964, the Manzł Collection houses, together with some drawings, two beautiful bas-reliefs in bronze, Death by violence of 1963, the iconography of Death of the Partisan and Death of Pope Giovanni, in memory of the Pope died in 1963 to whom the artist was deeply attached.
The opening of the forms in large monumental compositions had already happened in the 50s with the series of the famous Cardinals. "The first time I saw the Cardinals it was in St. Peter's in 1934: I was impressed by their hard masses, like a series of statues, aligned cubes, and the impulse to create a sculpture in my version of that ineffable reality was irresistible ". In the Great Sitting Cardinal, of 1955, the cope becomes rigid, imposing conical structure carved from a few, deep folds, which only shows a hand and the head with the high mitre. In the Standing Cardinal, of 1960, more than two meters high, the cope flattens without giving consistency to the body and the face, just outlined, is absent, hieratic.
The Manzł Collection again holds two works of great poetic power: the David,of 1939-40, and Francesca Blanc, of 1939-40. The biblical figure of David represents a constant inspiration in the Manzłs production. "I had in mind to make a man, but I made a baby instead. A David child who expresses the concentration of the whole figure towards a point inside it, the centripetal force that has always attracted me in the shape and power of a stone. My David is like a projection of the rock on which he is crouching and from which it receives in turn the needed energy which permeates everything. The 1938 version, during its first exposure to the IIIth Quadriennale di Roma in 1939, obtained a broad consent from the critics. It remains a masterpiece in the Manzłs production as to quality and harmony of the composition. "Francesca Blanc is still a work that I love in particular. Perhaps because of the tragic death of the portrayed young woman, Princess Ruspoli. The abandon of the body would also indicate a need for protection, an unconscious research of the mother's womb where to retreat as it once was". The very young Francesca fascinates the artist, who employs two years, from 1940 to 1942, to complete the portrait. The final version, a bronze near the life-size, exposed at the IVth Quadriennale di Roma,of 1943, let Manzł win the Grand Prize for Sculpture.
