Tag Archives: Kalo Foundation

Best known for his sculptural sprites in Frank Lloyd Wright’s Midway Gardens project, Alfonso Iannelli was instrumental in bringing about the modernist design movement in Chicago. One of the masterpieces that emerged from his Park Ridge studio was a plaster bust of Abraham Lincoln that has charted a curious course in recent decades. After Iannelli’s death in 1965, the Kelmscott Gallery in Chicago acquired much of his estate. The bust then made its way from the Abraham Lincoln Book Shop in Chicago and back to Iannelli’s studio, which was bought and transformed into the Iannelli Studios Heritage Center by the …

  A fundraising campaign has been launched to address structural problems at the Iannelli Studios Heritage Center in Park Ridge. The property at 255-257 N. Northwest Highway in Park Ridge includes a mid-19th century house and former blacksmith shop that served as the longtime headquarters of renowned artist Alfonso Iannelli. The Kalo Foundation of Park Ridge acquired the complex in 2011 and has established a museum, library and workroom where the works of Iannelli and other local artists are available for the public to view and study. Recently discovered structural flaws to the main studio areas will require modern bracing …

The Kalo Foundation/Iannelli Studios Heritage Center of Park Ridge welcomed the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary in March to view the studio’s 11-foot statue of the Madonna. The visit was facilitated by alumnae of Chicago’s former Immaculata High School, which the statue once graced. The Madonna was designed in 1922 by sculptor Alphonso Iannelli and commissioned by architect Barry Byrne, who was hired by the BVM nuns to design Immaculata. After the sisters closed the school and sold the building in 1981, the sculpture was removed by the purchasers and donated to the Smart Museum at the …