Hollywood

Enzo Gallo arrived in Miami in November of 1960, one of the first refugees from the Castro regime. In the years to come he would be followed by 750,000 others who found life unbearable in a communist state. But when Enzo arrived, none of the present refugee assistance programs existed yet.

Although the largest waves of Cubans had not yet landed in Miami, their presence already was being felt on the local job market. Speaking only Spanish, pages of classified ads in hand, they could be seen every morning on the streets and in the buses around Miami. Wages, already low, plummeted to 60 an hour for unskilled labor.

With the help of a friend, Miguel Morales, Enzo found a job paying $1.25 an hour in a marble shop on 79th Street, and subsequently, another job in Hollywood, Florida.

So there was Professor Gallo at 33, working in a marble shop, doing jobs that he easily could have handled ten years earlier. His wife, son, and home were in Havana, along with his life's work: his academic accreditation, his artistic achievements and reputation, and even his sculpture itself-all had been left behind in a country to which he could not return.

Alone in a strange land with different customs and language, Enzo Gallo had nothing left but faith and his hands.

He rushed to work every morning, anxious to touch the marble, to seek reassurance in its familiar feel and sounds. If Enzo had trouble communicating with the other workers, at least he could talk to the marble, and listen as it spoke back to him in the age-old sounds of chisel on stone. This is a nuance of sculpture known only to workers in stone: it is carved not just with the hand and eye, but with the ear as well, listening for the depth of the material, for the weight of the next blow of the mallet, for the next thrust of the pneumatic chisel.

After a year and a half at the marble studio in Hollywood, Enzo got a better job designing lamps in Miami, and brought his wife and child to Miami. During this period he also met three artists who helped him launch his career as a sculptor in his new country. "Fred Milanese in Hollywood let me use his studio for anything I wanted to do. The same is true of Cheri Litt, who has an art school in North Miami. And sometime later I started teaching regularly in the school that Joy Rubin had. About three months after I began there she opened the Hollywood Art Academy on Harrison Street, the city's first art school and the studio division of Hollywood Junior College:'

Along with his full-time job and part-time teaching, during the early 1960s Enzo worked to re-establish himself as a sculptor. In 1961 he designed and executed a plaque bas-relief presented by the Pan American Club to the Consul General of Panama, Manuel J. Castillo. In June of 1962 he donated a sculpture titled "Winter" to the Children's Home Society of Fort Lauderdale.

About a year after he joined the lamp manufacturing firm, Enzo faced a tough decision. He didn't know whether he could support his wife and two small sons-second son Julio was an infant then-if he abandoned the security of his job to become an independent marble worker. He only knew that his real skills lay with marble, and that he didn't want to execute somebody else's designs after doing his own for so many years.

But in spite of his financial worries, he decided to take the plunge anyway, with the strong support of his wife Carmen. After weeks of searching, Enzo found a location for his studio: a 12-by-30- foot concrete block building just off Hallandale Beach Boulevard in Hallandale, a small town adjoining Hollywood.

Two of the people who supported Enzo during those lean years are friends to this day. Everett Allen, chairman of the board of the American Bank of Hollywood, introduced Enzo  to Roy Fairbrother, a Hollywood businessman, who had just begun the landscaping and expansion of a large cemetery. Today, Hollywood Memorial Gardens is one of the nation's most spectacular cemeteries, graced with marble statuary and six huge, all-marble chapels, with a seventh in progress. Each chapel has a mosaic ceiling, stained or etched-glass windows, inlaid marble floor and altar. Each design is highly distinctive, conceived by Enzo Gallo with the same superb craftsmanship he applies to his sculpture.

An early source of commissions, and one that continues today, was the Doral Country Club and Hotels. Nearly all the marble sculpture, mosaics and other work was done by Enzo and his helpers, including his brothers Miguel (Mike) and Roberto, who joined him at Enzo Gallo Studio.

During the middle 1960s, Enzo's reputation as an artist grew along with his business. Notable commissions during the latter 1960s include a basrelief at Temple Beth-El in Hollywood and four mammonth relief panels on the front of the law offices of Glasel, Meyer, Leban, and Fixel on Hollywood Beach Boulevard, Hollywood. Representing the Fiesta Tropical, Law, Energy, and Medicine, the six-foot-wide panels soar 24 feet, just below the roof line of the building, and because of their prominent location have become one of Enzo Gallo's best-known works.

Among the awards the sculptor garnered during this period was a citation from the Florida South Chapter of the American Institute of Architects in November 1969 for his spectacular 12-by-27 foot mural in the lobby of the Mona Lisa Apartments on Miami Beach. The powerful forms of the mural, cast in high relief, are countered by almost delicate copper sculpture strategically placed along its length, a technique Enzo inaugurated earlier that year in an equally mammoth mural at the Century 21 condominium complex on Biscayne Boulevard at 183rd Street.

The early 1970s saw Enzo reap still more honors and major commissions. A series of major mosaics drew nearly 1,000 to their dedication at the offices of American Savings and Loan Association of Miami Beach.

In June of 1971 the artist was cited by the Florida Tile, Marble, and Terrazzo Institute for his efforts to make Florida a center of traditional and contemporary marble art. His serenely graceful work in white Carrara marble, "The Nuns;' took first place for sculpture in that year's Seven Lively Arts Festival in Hollywood. He also took home a 'first prize from the Florida Sculptors Association show at the Bacardi Gallery in Miami.

Three major honors were bestowed on Enzo during 1973- 74. In early 1973 he was notified by the Department of Housing and Urban Development that he was among only 339 artists out of 1,700 selected to be represented in a catalog of art works for public agencies and private sponsors. Later that year he learned that the senior curator of modern art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Maurice Tuchman, had juried Enzo's marble work, "Flight;' into the Artists' Biennial at the New Orleans Museum of Art. And in September of 1974, one of his marble works was juried into the Pagani Foundation's famed exhibition of sculpture in the open air at the Museum of Modern Art in Milan, Italy.

In late 1976, Enzo's career as a sculptor took an upward turn when he acquired a dynamic representative, Gertrude Freeman, a patron and collector who has held numerous major posts in South Florida art organizations and museums.

One of Ms. Freeman's first steps was to arrange a one-person show at the Heller Building in Miami. The show was a sellout-a welcome development in the career of Enzo Gallo. Next, she arranged for forthcoming shows at the Omni International Hotel in Miami and at one of the finest galleries in Palm Beach; she was also instrumental in obtaining commissions for him under the various Art in Public Places program.

Critical acclaim has followed financial success in Gallo's case. Writing in the Fort Lauderdale News and Sun-Sentinel, art critic Schubert Jonas stated: "It has been a pleasure over the years to watch the development of the work of Enzo Gallo. His technique has always been good, but now he adds a feeling for formal qualities. The result is an immensely satisfying use of the materials with a most pleasing awareness of form and the use of negative space ... He carries a lot of fire and enthusiasm into his work and is incredibly productive:'

Larry Argiro, Professor Emeritus of the State University of New York, feels that Gallo's work "clearly shows an inexhaustible strength and vitality" and notes that he has seen firsthand "his facile ability to give significant form and rhythmic movement to his nonobjective creations ... :'

To Dr. Lamore Michelson, art historian at Young College, Enzo Gallo is amazingly versatile. "You think you have him pigeonholed primarily as a sculptor in marble, and you stand in awe contemplating his recent works, the living curves, the rhythmical interplay of contours and planes, the articulation of hollows and protuberances, and above all the tactile significance of polished stone opposing the patina of a surface in its natural state-you say to yourself, 'Here is the ultimate fusion of beauty and power’

'And then you wander further. Enzo Gallo, you find, has done creditable work in many materials: in clay, in castings, in mosaics, stained glass, plastic and metal. ... Everything he does is with the soul of an artist, a reverent approach to the material he is using and its esthetic significance:'

Regardless of material, Dr. Michelson finds that Gallo's work has a "distinguishing style, vitality, a pent-up energy-power plus beauty, pleasing to the senses plus a deep spiritual significance:'

Henry Gamson, a Chicago sculptor, sees most of Gallo's forms and shapes as derived from human anatomy. "They are then twisted, turned and bent, sometimes enlarged or elongated and sometimes diminished and repeated to create the accents, rhythms and counterpoints of the composite abstraction. He never loses sight of the anatomical point of departure but maintains its integrity of form while incorporating it into the larger concept with a deftness of vision and a keen sense of rhythm and balance.

"Enzo Gallo;' Gamson notes, "is at once the complete marble sculptor-craftsman, inventor, and plastic poet: a Renaissance Man of the Arts."

Many others have added their comments to these. Ultimately, however, regardless of the vagaries of politics and of life's fortunes, it is the works themselves that give voice to their significance.

The works of Enzo Gallo - in marble, bronze, or glass - stand tall and speak clearly of form, discipline, concept and beauty.

Formed in the crucible of love for the marble, intensive training, and unrelenting dedicated work, Enzo Gallo's sculpture will endure.