Ugo Guidi, The cyclist (1959)

tuff, h. 35x27x19 cm
Forte dei Marmi, Museo Ugo Guidi

When Ugo Guidi sculpted this Cyclist in 1959, the years of Coppi and Bartali have just finished (Coppi won his last Giro d'Italia in 1953), but in the following years athletes such as Magni, Anquetil, Adorni and then Merckx and Gimondi remind those epic competitions.
The Cyclist sculpted in 1959 is realized in tuff, a material that Guidi loved much: the athlete is bent on his bycicle, with the legs slightly risen compared to the ground (maybe he is riding on a slope), and his head is looking behind, it seems that the cyclist wants to know if his opponents are not reaching him. We know that the athlete is on a bycicle because he is a cyclist, but we cannot see the bycicle: this is an expedient used by Guidi to make the observer concentrate on the man, who is working hard and is incited by the crowd. The attention of Guidi is addressed toward the cycling as toil and passion, far from today's cycling which has lost some of his "heroic" connotation.

A project by
Federico Giannini

Museo Ugo Guidi
(Forte dei Marmi)

Associazione Amici
del Museo Ugo Guidi
Onlus


Humanities
Computing

University of Pisa