Name/Title
Family Of ManEntry/Object ID
1962.0004Description
Costantino Nivola is renowned for his large-scale, abstracted sculptures made from his own invented process of sand casting and cement carving. His early exposure to both stone masonry and fresco painting allowed him to later mesh the two, creating compelling three-dimensional murals that seem to emerge from the walls themselves. Nivola attributed his unique sand-casting technique to inspiration while playing with his children, who fashioned sandcastles from packed wet sand.
Nivola left his town of Sardinia during Fascism's sweep across Italy, moving first to Paris in 1938 and shortly after to the United States in 1939. By 1954, Nivola was named director of Harvard's Design Workshop and the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
Family of Man consists of two cast-concrete bas-reliefs, which can be found flanking the main entrance to the Van Pelt-Dietrich Library. Each panel is emblematic of Nivola's abstracted style with a series of forms that allude to family groupings.Type of Sculpture
ReliefDimensions
Dimension Description
SizeHeight
220 inWidth
127 inDepth
7 in