Clement Renzi

Clement Renzi (born as Clement Edward Joseph Peter Renzi) was an American sculptor whose figurative bronze and terra cotta works depict people, human relationships, animals, and birds.

His work has been popular with collectors in California's Central Valley and is placed in more than 60 public venues, primarily in that region.

Clement Renzi was the third of seven children, born to parents Clemente Renzi and Luisa Guastaferro.

The couple had been drawn to Central California's Tulare County because of its resemblance to the landscape of Clemente's native village of Dugenta, Italy.

After the family lost their prune orchard in the stock market crash of 1929, they moved to Farmersville, California, where Clemente worked managing a ranch.

Clement Renzi's first drawing, at about age seven, depicted a cow on his family's farm.

He resolved to become a sculptor during a family trip to San Francisco's Palace of the Legion of Honor.

During that visit, he encountered the sculptures of Auguste Rodin and had difficulty keeping his hands off them, despite admonitions of a security guard.

At the end of World War II, while serving as a naval officer in Hawaii, Renzi worked in a lumberyard, where he began to experiment with woodcarving.

Later, while at U.C. Berkeley studying business administration through the G.I. Bill, he took art classes with Jacques Schnier and Richard O'Hanlon.

After he had graduated in 1947 and was working as an accountant for Standard Oil, a fellow student urged him to attend a lecture by art educator Henry Schaefer-Simmern.

The lecture was an epiphany for Renzi, who said, "It was just like I had walked into daylight from darkness."

"It was that kind of an experience and it had a profound effect on me. Here was Henry saying that art cannot be imposed upon you. You have to make your own judgments. I had thought that the teacher alone played that part and made all the judgments, but Henry said, 'No, you are perfectly free to do it your own way. The most important thing is that you do what you can do, in the way that you feel it, and the way you can express it. It has perfect validity as a work of art when you do it your own way.' That enormous sense of freedom gave me an exciting license to advance along my own path."

At age 27, Renzi enrolled as a charter member of Schaefer-Simmern's Institute of Art Education and continued his studies there for five years.

He later said that Schaefer-Simmern provided a “course to guide my whole life work.”

Although Renzi experimented with drawing, painted needlework, mosaic, and block printing, Schaefer-Simmern observed that his work all seemed to resemble sculpture and encouraged him to focus on that medium.

In 1950, Renzi married Dorothy Ohannesian, a classically trained singer from Fresno, California.

When Renzi complained to Dorothy that his accounting job at Standard Oil felt increasingly unsatisfying, she persuaded him to seek part-time jobs that would allow him to focus on his art.

In 1954–1955, Dorothy studied singing in Vienna through an Alfred Hertz Master's Fellowship from UC Berkeley.

During this time, Clement studied at Vienna's Academy of Applied art, P. 16.

with a special focus on block printing.

The couple also studied in Paris.

Following their return to the United States, Clement completed his first major commission, The "Fourteen Stations of the Cross", for a Christian Brothers retreat center in St. Helena.

In 1957, he and Dorothy moved to New York City to accommodate Dorothy's recording contract with MGM records.

Renzi studied anatomy at the Art Students League, and before long, he had secured a workspace at New York's Sculpture Center.

Clement offered a large tapestry, Eat, Drink and Be Merry, for sale at the gallery at an audaciously high price, not fully wanting to part with it.

When, to his surprise, the work was sold, Dorothy encouraged Clem to devote himself full-time to his sculpture.

P. 16.

With the Sculpture Center, he participated in several New York exhibits, was featured in shows traveling nationwide, and held a one-man exhibit in 1960.

In a brochure for the 1960 exhibit, Sculpture Center's founder, commented, “These little people with their long noses, big eyes, and chubby figures live in a far-away land.

They are friendly, warm and at peace with themselves, enjoying their unimportant happy moments.

We do not know them or their country, but Renzi does, as you can readily see by this show.

Through his sculpture, we watch them as they work and play in close harmony, concerned only with the miracles of their simple world.”

In 1963 the couple moved to Dorothy's hometown of Fresno, to raise their daughter in a quieter environment.

Although he had intended to continue shipping his work to the Sculpture Center in New York, his work quickly proved appealing to Fresno collectors.

Within a year, Renzi had secured a commission for a large bronze, The Visit, for the City's new outdoor mall.

Renzi taught in the art department at Fresno State College for three years, but left when it seemed to be taking too much attention from his work.

Renzi had built a studio in his backyard in Fresno's Fig Garden neighborhood, and travelled periodically to cast his larger bronze works through the lost wax process in ItalyItaly and Spain.

As costs rose in Europe, he turned to foundries in Mexico City and California.

His terra cotta works, made from locally derived clay, were often cast in a kiln on the premises of his home.