Venezuelan sculptor, born in Rome. Between 1931 and 1935 he was a student at the School of Sacred Art in Rome, while working as an assistant in the workshops of sculptors Torquato Tamagnini and Lorenzo Ferri. In 1939, he entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, but was conscripted into the Italian army following the outbreak of the Second World War; he resumed his studies after the war and graduated in July 1946. In 1948, he was one of three sculptors selected to represent Italy in the ‘XIV Olympiad Sport in Art’ exhibition at the V&A, London. A photograph of his bronze group, Japanese Wrestlers, was published in the ILN (24 July 1948, p. 93). In 1949, he emigrated to Venezuela and embarked upon a successful career producing statues of military heroes and liberators, most notably of Simon Bolivar, with standing statues in Caracas and in Belgrave Square, London, and equestrian statues in Barinas, Colón, Píritu and Turén, Venezuela; Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic; and Brussels, Belgium. Daini’s other commission, mostly in Venezuela, include monuments to the Founders of Cumaná, 1967, Cumaná, to the Venezuelan Soldier, 1971, Campo de Carabobo, Valencia, and to the First Republic, 1974, National Pantheon, Caracas.
Bibliography: T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Watford, 2023, pp. 262–65; Venezuela e Historia; Wikihistoria del Arte Venezolano.
Terry Cavanagh November 2022