Sirio Tofanari (1886-1969) formed himself at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, but intolerant of the academic rules he left his studies after only one year. Since the years of his self-taught training, Sirio Tofanari has specialized in bronze sculpture. Perhaps influenced by his father's passion for hunting, he showed a keen interest in animal figures and an innate ability to represent them plastically. In 1906 he decided to leave for Paris and soon after for London where he could give free reign to his instinct and intuition as an artist, starting from the study and observation of live animals, since in London there was already an important zoological garden. Also the constant visits to the anatomical collections of animals in the Museum of Natural History in South Kensington contributed to make him a master of the features and the movements of many animals. The real advantage of Tofanari was to have used an extremely modern synthetic line, never neglecting a strong naturalism. The dynamism of animal movements is often rendered with lines that suddenly change direction, highlighting the muscles, the breath, the reactions of the animals.
He was mainly interested in representing exotic and wild animals, like gazelles, orangutans, owls, but also, as in this case, panthers and bears.
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