Joseph Motto (1891-1965) studied at the Cleveland School of Art and was the first art teacher at Hawken School, where he served on the faculty from the school's founding in 1915 until 1928, and where his statue of Pan still resides on the lower school campus. He began a career of working on large-scale sculpture commissions, first with his teacher, Herman Matzen, a bust of whom he created for the Cleveland School of Art; and later with colleague Stephen Rebeck to create a number of larger sculptural pieces in Cleveland, including a bust of Shakespeare formerly displayed in the Cleveland Cultural Gardens. Motto also was a skilled ceramicist and watercolorist. The artist won many awards during his lifetime and influenced many young art students.
Motto started exhibiting his work in the May Show in 1921 and exhibited regularly through 1945. He established a studio in the late 1920s in Florence, Italy, where he became known as the "Madonna" sculptor, and made over forty crossings between Cleveland and Europe. The last twenty years of his career focused on major commissions for the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland. These include the sculpture of St. John Bosco (1954) that graces the city's Holy Rosary Catholic School, a large crucifix for St. John's Cathedral, and his last major work in 1958, the statue of St. Rose of Lima for St. Rose's in Cleveland.
Source: www.busaccagallery.com
