The Kiss - Alfred PINA (1887-1966)

Bronze group with a brownish dark green patina
signed on the base "A. Pina"
cast by "A. Valsuani" (foundry stamp)

France
circa 1927
height 51,5 cm
width 30 cm
depth 23 cm

Biography :
Alfred Pina (1887-1966) was a French sculptor of Italian origin. In 1904, he was awarded the National Grand Prize for Italian Sculpture at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, where Pina attended Professor Broggi's Artistic Anatomy course. He went to Bologna, then to Rome. The attendance of French artists made him want to know Paris where he arrived in 1911. Alfred Pina then rented the orangery at the Imbergères castle in Sceaux and exhibited at the Salon of French artists from 1911 to 1914. He received many orders busts , and tried to engrave on wood. After the declaration of the First World War, Alfred Pina exiled in Montpellier, whose museum acquired a Bust of Beethoven.

The war ended, Alfred Pina returned to Paris and settled in Montparnasse, where he rented a workshop rue du Maine, adjacent to that of Antoine Bourdelle. The retrospective exhibition of his works at the Allard Gallery in 1920 was a great success. In the early twenties, Alfred Pina moved to the Nièvre. He acquired a stone quarry at Malvaux which served him to honor his many orders for war memorials. Devoid of business acumen, he bought with the sale of the quarry a farm of thirty hectares in Mesves-sur-Loire. "More adept at modeling the earth than turning it over," he returned to Paris, leaving his farm to the care of a friend. He found his Italian friends, the painters Arduino Colato, Varèse and Sili Prandi, the Swiss sculptor Wegener, the engraver Rappa. A universal contest launched by Benito Mussolini designated him for the project of the tomb of Dante which was his masterpiece. He went back to Rome. When he returned to France in 1929, Alfred Pina organized an exhibition of Italian artists from the capital, at the Cercle de la rue Boissy d'Anglas. The bronzes from Dante's tomb were sent to cast iron during the Second World War. Alfred Pina settled in Mesves-sur-Loire and obtained French nationality. He exhibited in Nevers and Vezelay, where he participated in an exhibition of religious art.