Italia via Glasgow

I was in Glasgow (very wet) today for a meeting and took this chance to blip the Italian Centre in Ingram Street.

The statue is by Alexander Stoddart. There are several pieces by Stoddart in Glasgow's Merchant City quarter. Italia, a 2.6 metre, glass re-in-forced polymer statue on top of Ingram Street represents the contribution of Italian traders to the area. Classical in style, the female form is swathed in a chiton and carries symbols of ancient Italy: a palm branch in her right hand and an inverted cornucopia in her left.

Alexander Stoddart (born in Edinburgh, 1959) is a Scottish sculptor, who, since 2008, has been Her Majesty's Sculptor in Ordinary in Scotland. He works primarily on figurative sculpture in clay within the neoclassical tradition. Stoddart is best known for his civic monuments, including 10 feet (3.0 m) bronze statues of David Hume and Adam Smith, philosophers during the Scottish Enlightenment, on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, and others of James Clerk Maxwell and John Witherspoon. Stoddart says of his own motivation, "My great ambition is to do sculpture for Scotland", primarily through large civic monuments to figures from the country's past.

He was raised in Paisley, Scotland, where he developed an early interest in the arts and music, and later trained in fine art at the Glasgow School of Art (1976?1980) and read the History of Art at the University of Glasgow. During this time he became increasingly critical of contemporary trends in art, such as pop art, and concentrated on creating figurine pieces in clay. Stoddart associates the lack of form in modern art with social decay, by contrast, his works include many classical allusions.