Bartoletti's Fountains Of Islington
Two eye-catching fountains in Islington Village have been admired by locals and passers-by for decades, yet few know anything about the artist who created these unique pieces of art. One is a curvaceous modernist fountain in front of the 1276 Islington Avenue that bears a plaque on the pool rim, “Designed and constructed by Alfio Bartoletti, 1964”. A second fountain is found nearby in front of 90 Cordova Avenue featuring a mermaid riding a rearing sea-horse with water spouting from its nostrils facing an opposing spout from a giant clam. A similar plaque on this fountain reveals it was created by the same artist the following year in 1965.
Bartoletti 1965 fountain, 90 Cordova Ave. (Source: Neil Park)
The 1276 Islington and 90 Cordova apartment buildings were built in the early 1960s by Orlando Corporation, a construction and real estate development company founded as Fidani and Sons in 1948 by Carlo Fidani. The Fidani family still owns and operates the business today and has become Canada’s largest privately-owned industrial real estate developer and landlord. Orlando subsequently sold the buildings which are now owned and operated by Ranee Managmement.
Alfio Bartoletti was related to the Fidanis through family connections dating back to the mid-1800’s in their ancestral town of Porto Civitanova in Italy. Near Ancona on the Adriatic coast, the town is known today as Civitanova Marche. The Fidani and Bartoletti families immigrated to Canada together in the early 1900s, settling in Toronto’s west end. Carlo Fidani passed away in 1952 after which his son, Orey Fidani, took over as head of Orlando Corporation. When Orey Fidani was looking for an artist in the early 1960s to commission the fountains for Orlando’s new apartment developments in Islington, he hired his cousin Alfio.
Alfio Bartoletti was related to the Fidanis through family connections dating back to the mid-1800’s in their ancestral town of Porto Civitanova in Italy. Near Ancona on the Adriatic coast, the town is known today as Civitanova Marche. The Fidani and Bartoletti families immigrated to Canada together in the early 1900s, settling in Toronto’s west end. Carlo Fidani passed away in 1952 after which his son, Orey Fidani, took over as head of Orlando Corporation. When Orey Fidani was looking for an artist in the early 1960s to commission the fountains for Orlando’s new apartment developments in Islington, he hired his cousin Alfio.
Bartoletti 1964 fountain, 1276 Islington Ave. (Source: Neil Park)
According to “Alfio Bartoletti: Film Studio Artist” (a biography written in 2011 by the artist’s son, Mario Bartoletti), Alfio was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil in 1900. His father’s contract as an Engineer with the Brazilian government expired soon after Alfio’s birth and the family returned to Porto Civitanova to take up residence in the family’s historic home there. After graduating from school in 1917 and a short stint in the Italian army at the close of WW1, Alfio went on to study at the Academies of Art in Padua and Florence. He later learned bronze casting and by the fall of 1921 he was studying at the University of Rome, supporting himself by working part-time at the film studios.
While in Rome, he became involved in a student resistance movement against the totalitarian regime of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. After his arrest and interrogation by Mussolini’s infamous “Blackshirts” in 1924, Alfio and his older brother Antonio left Italy in 1925 landing in Buffalo, New York where Alfio opened a small artist’s studio and was quite successful. Unfortunately he was forced to close the studio due to financial difficulties after the stock market crash of 1929. Alfio decided to draw on his experience from working in the Italian film industry, and in 1930 he moved to Hollywood, California with a loan from his uncle in Toronto.
While in Rome, he became involved in a student resistance movement against the totalitarian regime of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. After his arrest and interrogation by Mussolini’s infamous “Blackshirts” in 1924, Alfio and his older brother Antonio left Italy in 1925 landing in Buffalo, New York where Alfio opened a small artist’s studio and was quite successful. Unfortunately he was forced to close the studio due to financial difficulties after the stock market crash of 1929. Alfio decided to draw on his experience from working in the Italian film industry, and in 1930 he moved to Hollywood, California with a loan from his uncle in Toronto.
Alfio Bartoletti (date unknown) (photo courtesy of Anne Bartoletti, granddaughter of the artist).
He made his rounds of the film studios and did manage to find a little work. In 1931 he fell in love with a pretty young woman from British Columbia, Rosa Thomas. They were married in 1932 in Los Angeles and eventually had two sons – Mario in 1933 and Ross in 1935. By the mid-1930s Bartoletti’s artistic skills were increasingly in demand by Hollywood’s major motion picture studios for creating elaborate interiors on film sets. His work was featured in films such as The Scarlett Empress (1935) with Marlene Dietrich, and The Hurricane (1937).
After the outbreak of WWII in 1939, Bartoletti was eager to do whatever he could in the fight against the dictatorships of Mussolini and Hitler. He left the film industry to work with aircraft manufacturers Convair and Lockheed to develop plaster casts used in the moulding of airframes. After war ended in 1945, Alfio returned to the film industry working on films such as Tycoon (1947) with John Wayne, Arch of Triumph (1948) with Ingrid Bergman and Champion (1949) with Kirk Douglas. For a 1948 film Wake of the Red Witch, he sculpted, and then cast in rubber, a large octopus with which John Wayne struggles in several underwater screens. Later, Wayne told Bartoletti that the creature seemed so real it gave him the creeps.
After the outbreak of WWII in 1939, Bartoletti was eager to do whatever he could in the fight against the dictatorships of Mussolini and Hitler. He left the film industry to work with aircraft manufacturers Convair and Lockheed to develop plaster casts used in the moulding of airframes. After war ended in 1945, Alfio returned to the film industry working on films such as Tycoon (1947) with John Wayne, Arch of Triumph (1948) with Ingrid Bergman and Champion (1949) with Kirk Douglas. For a 1948 film Wake of the Red Witch, he sculpted, and then cast in rubber, a large octopus with which John Wayne struggles in several underwater screens. Later, Wayne told Bartoletti that the creature seemed so real it gave him the creeps.
Bartoletti (centre) with actors Roddy McDowell (left) and Dan O’Herlihy (right) examining an effigy sculpted by Bartoletti for Orson Welles 1948 film production of MacBeth . (Photo courtesy of Anne Bartoletti)
“Alfio Bartoletti, 52 years of age, enjoying his first trip back to Italy since his departure in 1925 as a political refugee from the Fascist government. He is on the deck of the Andrea Doria, Italy's beautiful new ocean liner, returning to Naples on its maiden voyage - April, 1953.” (Photo courtesy of Anne Bartoletti)
During the 1950’s, McCarthyism and fear of communism created an air of suspicion of foreigners working in Hollywood. Film studios were anxious to demonstrate their loyalty and began producing a number of anti-communist films. Bartoletti was working for Republic Studios when the studio’s President sent a message inviting all employees to view their new propaganda film, The Red Menace (1949). Bartoletti was busy working on plaster castings for a film in production and opted not to attend the screening. He did not realize his choice would be seen as unpatriotic. When he returned to work the following morning, he was barred from entry and told he was no longer needed. Bartoletti soon found that none of the Hollywood studios would hire him as his actions had raised suspicions about his political leanings even though he had never been a member of any political party – in Italy or America.
Disillusioned with life in America, Alfio and his wife Rosa sold their small farm in Sunland, California in 1953 and took an extended trip to Italy, spending several months with his family there. While in Italy, he visited actress Ingrid Bergman whom he had met while working on the “Arch of Triumph” film. Bergman was a fellow outcast of Hollywood after her affair and later marriage to Italian film director Roberto Rossellini.
Alfio and Rosa moved their family to Toronto later in 1953 taking up residence in an apartment in Etobicoke at 2692 Bloor St. W. near the corner of Old Mill Rd. and Bloor St. W. Alfio soon found work using his artistic skills to restore the ornate plaster ceiling of the historic St. Lawrence Hall. After swimmer Marilyn Bell’s heroic solo crossing of Lake Ontario in 1954, he was commissioned to design and cast a bronze plaque to dedicate the event. The plaque is in front of The Ontario Government Building on the CNE grounds.
Marilyn Bell DiLascio watches while her daughter Jodi, 20, polishes the plaque honoring her mother's swim across Lake Ontario. Her husband Joe looks on. (Source: Toronto Star, August 26, 1983)
The Royal York Hotel on Front St. W. in downtown Toronto built an extensive East Wing in 1959 that added new meeting and event rooms, many named after Canadian Provinces and Territories. In one of these, the “Ontario Room”, Bartoletti was hired to design and create an impressive large plaster trillium motif which still adorns the inner doorway of the room today.
(Above) Alfio Bartoletti doing final preparations on the Trillium motif for the Royal York’s Ontario Room in 1959. (Photo courtesy of Anne Bartoletti)
(Right) The Trillium motif as seen today from inside the Ontario Room. (Source: www.fairmont.com) |
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During the late fifties, Bartoletti once again found work in the film industry as many American television series were being filmed in Toronto – such as Hawkeye and the Last of the Mohicans starring Lon Chaney Jr. and Cannonball starring Paul Birch and William Campbell. He did a variety of work for these productions, however it was his knowledge of how to make break-away pieces for fight scenes that was most sought after by producers.
During the early 1960’s, Bartoletti moved with his wife and youngest son, Ross, to Jamaica. His major commission there involved sculpting several pieces for the Hope Botanical Gardens in Kingston. During that time, he was also asked to do some work for Sean Connery’s James Bond Film Dr. No, which was being filmed in Jamaica. Bartoletti thought it amusing that, so many years after having been black-listed in Hollywood, he was still being hired to do occasional artistic pieces for motion pictures.
Bartoletti returned to Toronto in 1963 and was hired as a sculptor by Balmer Studios, a contractor in ornamental plastering. He was still at Balmer when he designed and created the two Islington fountains for Orlando Corporation in 1964 and 1965. As Balmer’s name does not appear on the fountain plaques, Bartoletti likely did this work for Orlando separately as a private contractor.
In 1968, life in the Caribbean beckoned once again as Alfio and Rosa moved to the island of Montserrat where they resided until 1979. They moved back to Canada and retired in Mississauga where Alfio completed many oil paintings before passing away in 1985 at the age of 85.
During the early 1960’s, Bartoletti moved with his wife and youngest son, Ross, to Jamaica. His major commission there involved sculpting several pieces for the Hope Botanical Gardens in Kingston. During that time, he was also asked to do some work for Sean Connery’s James Bond Film Dr. No, which was being filmed in Jamaica. Bartoletti thought it amusing that, so many years after having been black-listed in Hollywood, he was still being hired to do occasional artistic pieces for motion pictures.
Bartoletti returned to Toronto in 1963 and was hired as a sculptor by Balmer Studios, a contractor in ornamental plastering. He was still at Balmer when he designed and created the two Islington fountains for Orlando Corporation in 1964 and 1965. As Balmer’s name does not appear on the fountain plaques, Bartoletti likely did this work for Orlando separately as a private contractor.
In 1968, life in the Caribbean beckoned once again as Alfio and Rosa moved to the island of Montserrat where they resided until 1979. They moved back to Canada and retired in Mississauga where Alfio completed many oil paintings before passing away in 1985 at the age of 85.
Researched and written by Neil Park
Painting “Old Years Night”, by Alfio Bartoletti in Montserrat, 1979 (Photo courtesy of Paul Bartoletti and Phyllis Bartoletti)