Vittore Bocchetta
1918–2021 · Italian sculptor and painter of the anti-fascist resistance
Vittore Bocchetta (Sassari, 1918 - Verona, 2021) was an Italian sculptor, painter and academic whose life combined anti-fascist resistance, exile in the Americas and a long sculptural career. Born in Sardinia, he studied classics, and his life was marked by persecution: in 1944 he was deported to Nazi concentration camps, and he survived them.
After the war he emigrated to Argentina and then to Venezuela, where he worked in ceramics, murals and models. In 1958 he settled in Chicago, where he combined teaching with sculpture. He worked in bronze, stainless steel, alabaster and marble. He regarded Daedalus (1964) as his first true work of art.
His most visible legacy in Italy is Cypress, a stainless steel obelisk more than seven metres tall, erected in Verona in 1988 in memory of the young men who attacked the local prison in 1944. He also wrote an autobiography covering 1940 to 1945, later translated into English and German.