Corrado Parducci
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Corrado Giuseppe Parducci (March 10, 1900 - November 22, 1981) was an American architectural sculptor. He was born in Buti, Italy and immigrated to New York City in the United States in 1904. At a young age he was sponsored by heiress/sculptor Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney and sent to art school. He attended the Beaux-Arts Academy of Design and Art Students League. His teachers included anatomist George Bridgman and sculptor Albin Polasek.
Parducci was apprenticed to architectural sculptor Ulysses Ricci in 1917. While working for Ricci, and later while in the Anthony DiLorenzo studio, his work came to the attention of Detroit architect Albert Kahn. In 1924 Parducci moved to Detroit, where he spent the rest of his career. Parducci’s work can be found on many of the Detroit area’s finest buildings including the Guardian, Buhl, Penobscot (all of these with architect Wirt C. Rowland), Fisher, Kresge, Springwells Water Treatment Plant, the Levin Federal Courthouse, St. Aloysius Church, Blessed Sacrament Cathedral, Shrine of the Little Flower, Trinity Lutheran Church, Meadow Brook Hall, the University of Detroit and numerous other churches, schools, banks, hospitals and residences.
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His sculptures can be found in most major Michigan cities including Ann Arbor, Dearborn, Flint, Grand Rapids, Jackson, Kalamazoo, Marquette, Royal Oak, Saginaw, and Ypsilanti. By the end of his long and productive career, Parducci’s efforts adorned about 600 buildings.
The last commission Parducci completed was a portrait of architect Henry Hobson Richardson in a Romanesque setting that was carved on a lintel in the Senate chamber of the New York Capitol in Albany, New York in 1980.
Although Parducci worked in a variety of styles, notably Romanesque, Classical, Renaissance and even Aztec/Mayan/Pueblo Deco, it was his pioneering of the Greco-Deco style for which he is best remembered.
References
- Kvaran, Einar Einarsson, Shadowing Parducci, unpublished manuscript