Ivo Pacini

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Ivo Pacini (born November 25, 1883, in Grosseto, Kingdom of Italy – died 1959 in Grosseto) was an Italian sculptor who worked mainly in Tuscany.

He came from an artistic family: his father Ulisse was a musician and band director, his mother was an actress, and his brother Ugo was involved in local anarchist circles. Pacini trained in the workshop of the Sculptor Vincenzo Pasquali and began making works in the 1910s and 1920s. His first documented piece is a marble monument to the anarchist Francisco Ferrer, placed in Roccatederighi on September 14, 1914. He also carved plaques, medallions and funerary steles for Grosseto’s Misericordia cemetery. Some earlier youth works, such as busts of Mazzini, Bovio, Carducci and Socci, and a plaque for engineer Tosini, are no longer traceable.

A local chronicle from 1920 described Pacini as a humble artist who lived quietly and did not seek fame, though people noticed his skill with marble and stone.

In the 1920s he opened his own workshop on Via Garibaldi, which soon became Grosseto’s main meeting place for the new art scene. He created many World War I memorials across the province, and his workshop attracted writers, painters and other artists. Intellectuals like Guelfo Civinini and Vincenzo Cardarelli, and painters such as Paride Pascucci and Memo Vagaggini, visited, while sculptors and painters from other cities also stopped by. This helped foster the Grosseto artistic movement, and the first Maremma Union Art Exhibition opened on May 24, 1933.

Carlo Gentili recalls that Pacini’s workshop was a “nest” for artists, writers, musicians and people from many political backgrounds.

Among Pacini’s later works is a bust of Giuseppe Mazzini placed in 1950 on the Molino a Vento Bastion of Grosseto’s walls. He also designed a monument to Andrea da Grosseto that was never built. Pacini died in 1959.