Pietro Porcelli

Pietro Giacomo Porcelli (30 January 1872 – 28 June 1943) was the Italian-born sculptor responsible for many statues in Western Australia, including the Explorers' Monument, and those of C. Y. O'Connor and Alexander Forrest.

Born in Bisceglie in the province of Bari, he moved to Sydney with his fisherman father at the age of 8. After initial training at the New South Wales Academy of Art, he furthered his study of sculpture and drawing in Naples, before returning to Fremantle with his father in 1898. Later that year, he completed his first commission - a bust of Sir John Forrest that now stands in the main entrance hall of Parliament House. His 1902 statue of Alexander Forrest was the first such statue of a prominent public figure to be completed in Perth.

Porcelli also completed war memorials in Kalgoorlie, Boulder, Victoria Park, West Leederville and Moora, and numerous headstones in Karrakatta and Fremantle Cemeteries, including that of Sir John Forrest in 1918.

After a period of work in Melbourne in the 1920s, he returned to Perth in 1939, where he died in 1943. He is [http://www.mcb.wa.gov.au/NameSearch/details.php?id=KB00072239 buried] in Karrakatta Cemetery.

Major works

References

Keane, S. (1990). Pietro Porcelli. Australian Dictionary of Biography, 1891-1939. Melbourne University Press. ISBN 0-522-84437-5
Metropolitan Cemeteries Board (1998). [http://kleinmichel.prov.ru/Voronoff.pdf Karrakatta Cemetery Historical Walk Trail] .