Cino del Duca

The publisher, cinema producer and patron of the arts, Cino Del Duca was born in Montedivone in the Marche region of Italy, on 25 July 1899. Son of a Garibaldian, Cino began his career as a typographical worker. An active anti-fascist, he took exile in France in 1932 and opened a small print works in Paris. There, he created Éditions Mondiales in 1934 and went on to become one of the leading Parisian press magnates in the post-war period. During the War, Del Duca was an active member of the Resistance. The cinema production company Del Duca Films enjoyed immediate success with Jean Becker’s Touchez pas au Grisbi in 1953, and Marcel Carné’s L’Air de Paris in 1954. The company closed after producing the Antonioni masterpiece L’Avventura in 1961. Cino Del Duca founded the agency Mondial Presse in 1956. He died in Milan on 24 May 1967. In 1975, Simone Del Duca set up a foundation to continue her late husband’s philanthropic work. She donated this sculpture of him to the Villa Sauber. She died on 16 May 2004.

The Hungary sculptor and artist Lajos Barta was born in Budapest in 1899. His formative years were spent in Romania, present-day Slovakia, Austria, and Italy. In 1938, he arrived in Paris, where he explored the world of surrealism and the group Abstraction-Création. He shared his Parisian studio with the painter Endre Rozsda. The two artists were regularly to be found in the company of Max Ernst and Tanguy. During World War Two, they operated in secret and eventually left Paris for Budapest in early 1943. A leading proponent of post-war abstract art, Barta was part of the Hungarian ‘Európai Iskola’ or European School surrealist movement between 1945 and 1948, and organised collective exhibitions with his friend Rozsda. After the Hungarian uprising was put down in October 1956, Rozsda moved to Paris permanently. Lajos Barta remained in Hungary until 1965, when he emigrated to West Germany. He died in Cologne in 1986.