Sculptor and coin designer born in London of Italian parents. After military service, 1944–48, he studied at the Royal College of Art, where, in 1950, he was awarded both the Drawing Prize and the Major Travelling Scholarship in Sculpture, enabling him to study in France and Italy; in the same year he was elected an Associate of the Royal College of Art (ARCA) and married fellow student, Sheila Maguire (d.2002). In 1951, he was awarded the Prix de Rome for Sculpture, allowing him to extend his studies in Europe by a further two years. Rizzello was elected an Associate of the Royal Society of British Sculptors (ARBS) in 1955 and a Fellow (FRBS) in 1961 (at the end of which year he won the society’s Sir Otto Beit Medal for his stone statue of Sir William Sevenoke, for Sevenoaks School, Kent). He was President of the RBS for an unprecedented two consecutive five-year-terms, 1976–86. He was a member of the Society of Portrait Sculptors (President 1968–73) and a Fellow both of the Chartered Society of Designers and of the Society of Illustrators, Artists & Designers. In 1977 he was appointed OBE. Rizzello designed numerous medals including those for the investiture of Charles as Prince of Wales (1969) and also its 25th anniversary (1994), awards including the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross (1995), and coins including the £2 coin commemorating the 50th anniversary of the United Nations (1995). His public sculptures include the Welsh National Memorial Statue of Lloyd George, Cardiff (1960); a bust of James Walker, Brunswick Quay, Rotherhithe, London (1988); Water Play, (bronze water feature and fountain), Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire (1993); a statue of K.C. Irving and the Beaver Fountain, New Brunswick, Canada (1995); a bust of Edward Jenner, St George’s Hospital, Tooting, London (1996); Dancer with Ribbon, for the façade of The Plaza, Oxford Street, London (1997); and statues of Osceola and Ponce de Leon, Naples, Florida, USA. His portrait memorial plaque of Nancy Astor, the first woman to sit in Parliament, is in the House of Commons (1996). At the time of his death, he was working on a multi-figure group, The Battle of Thermopylae, for the publisher Felix Dennis’s Garden of Heroes and Villains in Warwickshire.
Bibliography: D. Buckman, Artists in Britain since 1945 (2 vols: A–L, M–Z), Bristol, 2006; T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of South London, Liverpool, 2007, pp. 252, 253–54, 329–31, 458; The Guardian (online), 28 October 2004 (obituary); Mapping Sculpture; Monumental Journal, July 1962, p. 191 (illus. of statue of Sir William Sevenoke); The Times: (i) 12 December 1961, p. 12 (Otto Beit medal); (ii) 9 October 2004, p. 51 (obituary); P. Usherwood et al, Public Sculpture of North-East England, Liverpool, 2000, pp. 112, 334; Who Was Who, 2007.
Terry Cavanagh, 2007; revised, August 2024