Edoaedo Villa (1915 - 2011) was a notable South African sculptor of Italian descent who worked primarily in steel and bronze.
Villa was born in Bergamo, Italy and studied at the Andrea Fontini Art School. While studying sculpture in Milan, in 1939, Villa was conscripted for two years into the Italian army at the outbreak of World War 2.
By 1940 he was posted to North Africa, where he was injured and captured in Egypt by the English. Some time between 1941 and 1942, he was shipped to South Africa where he then spent the next four years at the Zonderwater prisoner of war camp under the care of Colonel H.F. Prinsloo, whose head was later sculpted in bronze by Villa for the military museum.
Villa started work with conventional heads and figures, and changed to work on stylized abstractions. His work included abstract explanations of the human condition, but retains some figurative concepts. Villa;s works has a strong cross-cultural synthesis which involves the Italian and the African. It is clearly informed by the cubism of Picasso.
Villa taught at the Polly Art Center in Johannesburg, which was founded as an adult education institution.
Edoardo Villa represented South Africa at the Venice Biennale on five occasions, and he has received awards at the Sao Paulo Biennales of 1957 and 1959. He has exhibited in over a hundred shows in Italy, Europe, England, Istrael, South America, Africa, and the United States .
Walk in the same direction as the "thumb", along the fenceline for 85 meters.
On the 31 May 1995, to celebrate the artist's 80th birthday, the Edoardo Villa Museum was officially opened at the University of Pretoria, South Africa.
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