Tons of Thanks From Italy : Bronze Sculpture in L.A. Commemorates Marshall Plan Aid

You know what they say about casting your bread upon the waters:

In 1948, the waters were the Atlantic Ocean, and the bread was the Marshall Plan, massive aid the United States sent to help rebuild war-wracked Europe--$1.5 billion to Italy alone.

And over the 40 years since, as the proverb says, the bread has come back--in Italian trade, in tourism, and in Los Angeles on Monday in the form of a six-ton bronze billet-doux , a sculptural thank-you courtesy of the Italian prime minister himself.

Ciriaco De Mita, on the first day of his two-day visit to Los Angeles, dedicated the gift “Colpo d’Ala,” “Wing Beat.” Created by modern Italian master Arnaldo Pomodoro to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Marshall Plan, it is at once a cube that has broken apart and a stylized bird poised for flight.

Token of Gratitude

Standing near the edge of the south reflecting pool at the Department of Water and Power building, where walkways were festooned in plastic bunting in the Italian colors--red, white and green--De Mita declared the work to be “a token of my country’s eternal gratitude” to the United States and to “this extraordinarily vital city” at “the extreme frontier of the Western world. From here it (is) almost ready to take flight to a faraway land, bringing a message of peace, progress and hope from our two countries.”

The bronze was donated by an Italian foundation named for Alcide De Gasperi, Italy’s first postwar prime minister, and was placed here because Los Angeles is “the model American city of the Space Age,” the foundation said in explaining its choice. (Like bookends to an epoch, another Italian bronze statue, this one commemorating the age of earthbound exploration, stands about a block away--Christopher Columbus.)

Mayor Tom Bradley welcomed the huge bronze as “a living monument” to the lessons of history: “Far too many young people either do not remember or have forgotten the devastation of World War II . . . and (have forgotten) the Marshall Plan.”

One who has not forgotten was at Monday’s dedication: Gen. George C. Marshall’s granddaughter, Katherine Winston, who pronounced the piece “magnificent.”

Winston said Marshall was a private person who felt that “if there was anything to be remembered,” it would be his actions, and not his person.

And so it has. A tribute from Italy is particularly suitable for a man who wrote couplets to his wife. “That’s one reason I’m glad the Italians have recognized him,” his granddaughter smiled. “Because it’s a romantic country--and he was very romantic.”

(The Pomodoro sculpture is the first authorized artwork in the DWP reflecting pools--but not the first. In 1974, an artist named Wade Cornell, under cover of darkness, set up in one reflecting pool a three-pronged beanstalk, powered by car batteries and topped with orange and yellow lotuses which lighted up and spouted water. He told the night watchman it was a gift to the people of Los Angeles. The city, unamused, dismantled it a few hours after dawn.)

De Mita’s day as the first Italian head of state to visit California began with a formal City Hall welcome, from a jazz band outside to a trumpet voluntary in City Hall chambers. City Council President John Ferraro, the son of Sicilian immigrants, was “excited” at greeting De Mita, but mangled the pronunciation of his name as he read the city proclamation. His Italian is “terrible,” he confessed later. His parents were, like most during the Depression, eager to Americanize their children, and learning Italian was not a priority. “Now,” sighed Ferraro, “I regret it.”

The prime minister planned Monday evening to tour the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s exhibition of works by 17th-Century Italian painter and engraver Guido Reni.

Today’s agenda includes an address at a daylong seminar on the Marshall Plan and a policy speech at the World Affairs Council tonight.

Honored by Countrymen

On Monday afternoon, De Mita got a bit of Hollywood-style adulation when he was mobbed by more than 200 Italian-Americans at Casa Italiano, a cultural center on the north edge of Chinatown.

Standing at attention to greet him were several veterans--among them a 97-year-old World War I survivor and a World War II member of Italy’s elite infantry unit, the Bersaglieri, in the regiment’s wide-brimmed black patent leather hat with feather cascade.

“As 100% Americans, there’s still a little bit of Italy in all of us,” said one Italian-American, Jackie Sorisi Nash. Then, straining to catch a glimpse of De Mita, she amended, “Well, let’s say 95%.”