ERCOLE DREI
(Faenza, 1886 - Rome, 1973)
Infantryman (1926)
Plaster
Height 29 cm
Base 10x11 cm
Signed on the back at the bottom "DREI"
Bibliography:
Ercole Drei - Eternal Modern Classic Language.
Echoes from the Twentieth Century 6 - Studiolo, Milan 2020
Edited by G. Cribiori, table 11
This figure probably represents the sketch of the Infantryman later used for the Monument to the Fallen of the First World War in Faenza.
The model shows us a soldier in a proud posture, wearing the classic helmet used by the army in the first conflict, and a rain cloak, with the rifle resting on the ground whose plastic grandeur brings to mind the soldiers later made by Eugenio Baroni for the Monument to Emanuele Filiberto Duca d'Aosta, in Turin.
Here too the workmanship is minimal and the forms are only hinted at.
Drei offered his work to his city free of charge, asking only for reimbursement of the costs of raw materials. The monument was inaugurated on November 21, 1926. The previous year, Drei had created the large monument to the fallen of Fusignano, melted down in 1942 for the recovery of war material; in 1927 he created the monument of San Lorenzo di Lugo, also in Romagna.
