Raffaello Arcangelo Salimbeni

Raffaello Arcangelo Salimbeni was undoubtedly the most modern and forward-looking among Florentine sculptors and painters of the post-World War II period. He created a series of works that were later exhibited at the Venice Biennale and the Rome Quadriennale, as well as at the Unknown Political Prisoner exhibition in 1953 at the Tate Gallery in London, alongside Henry Moore and the leading European sculptors of the time. He even received a letter of praise from Moore himself, dated March 23, 1953.
Raffaello Arcangelo Salimbeni was born in Florence in 1914 but lived in Siena, where he was discovered by Gianni Vagnetti, who encouraged him to move to Florence. There, the young Salimbeni became a student of Bruno Innocenti in the Sculpture Department of the Istituto d’Arte.
Salimbeni was the artist most open to modern experimentation during the 1950s to 1970s, as evidenced by his participation in major European exhibitions and his visit to Henry Moore in 1953.