The Kathredal — Mother Symbolically Represented

Achilles G. Rizzoli, The Kathredal - Mother Symbolically Represented, 1935, ink on paper, sheet and image: 33 ³⁄₄ × 22 in. (85.7 × 55.9 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mike Wilkins and Sheila Duignan, Bonnie and Sy Grossman, Berkeley, CA, and museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 2015.4, © The Ames Gallery, Berkeley, CA

Artwork Details

Title: The Kathredal — Mother Symbolically Represented
Artist: Achilles G. Rizzoli
Date: 1935
Location: Not on view
Dimensions: sheet and image: 33 ³⁄₄ × 22 in. (85.7 × 55.9 cm)
Copyright: © The Ames Gallery, Berkeley, CA
Credit Line: Gift of Mike Wilkins and Sheila Duignan, Bonnie and Sy Grossman, Berkeley, CA, and museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment
Mediums: ink
Mediums Description: ink on paper
Classifications: Drawing
Highlights: Folk and Self-Taught Art
Subjects: Architecture Exterior — religious — church
Object Number: 2015.4
Linked Open Data: https://edan.si.edu/saam/id/object/2015.4

Artwork Description

Achilles G. Rizzoli lived his entire life in San Francisco, working as a draftsman in an architectural office for more than forty years. He was devoted to his own art, particularly an extensive series of architectural renderings of a utopian city in which he portrayed people, most significantly his mother, as buildings. The Kathredal: Mother Symbolically Represented is an architectural personification of his mother’s essential attributes: strength, beauty, and spiritual perfection. The YTTE (Yield to Total Elation) plans are also symbolic representations of people but adopt a floor plan format. The YTTE drawings often explore ideas of his father, who disappeared when Rizzoli was nineteen.