Argentinian sculptor, principally of portrait busts and statues. He was a pupil of Luis Perlotti, collaborating with him on the Mausoleum of the Argentine boxer, Luis Ángel Firpo, in the Recoleta Cemetery, Buenos Aires. Ferraro shared a workshop with his wife, the sculptor Lidia Elsa Battisti. In 2006, following Ferraro’s death, his widow donated their workshop, along with more than 500 of her husband’s works, to the city of Buenos Aires to be opened as a museum. Notable among the works in the museum is a 2.4m high statue of the tango singer Carlos Gardel, Ferraro’s unsuccessful entry for a competition in which he felt he was the rightful winner. Ferraro’s work includes a group of seven busts of Argentine heroes in the Congreso de Tucumán underground station, Buenos Aires; the Monument to Aníbal Troilo (bandoneon player) in the Chacarita Cemetery, Buenos Aires; a bust of General Manuel Belgrano (1993) in Casa Rosada (Government House), Buenos Aires; and a bust of General Don José de San Martín’s biographer José Pacífico Otero, in Plaza Grand Bourg, Buenos Aires. He completed two statues of General Don José de San Martín, one for Belgrave Square, London, and another for Seville. Ferraro was awarded the Palma Sanmartiniano by the San Martín National Institute in 1990.
Bibliography: T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Watford, 2023, pp. 266–67; ‘En el Taller-Museo de Juan Carlos Ferraro – Buenos Aires’, Gardel in sus monumentos; ‘Juan Carlos Ferraro, el escultor del monumento a San Martín’, Mensajero del río; Patrimonio y Arte Urbano de la cuidad de Buenos Aires.
Terry Cavanagh November 2022