Adio diBiccari, at 94; sculptor shaped unmolded clay into masterpieces

Adio diBiccari worked on his Athena statue as his assistant Bob Shure held the ladder. (Ted Dully/ Globe Staff/ File 1980)

Keys slipped from the hand of Adio diBiccari and clinked on the table next to the door as he stepped inside his studio on Tavern Road, a block or so away from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The sound let his young assistant know he had arrived, and the sight of the master sculptor as he shaped unmolded clay meant the day's work had begun.

"He'd walk up and would be going so fast you couldn't see his hands move," said Bob Shure of Wilmington, a sculptor who was Mr. diBiccari's last assistant. "And then there would be all this clay over the floor, but he'd create a beautiful masterpiece. His hands were like magic. He was a master of taking off the right amounts of clay and adding it, and he did it intuitively."

The sculptures Mr. diBiccari and his brother-in-law Arcangelo Cascieri created in their studio after World War II and into the 1970s adorn buildings, churches, and parks across the country. A statue of Athena, a goddess from Greek mythology, stood atop the Athenaeum Press building in Cambridge, and the statues signifying learning, religion, and industry keep watch over pedestrians in Parkman Plaza on Boston Common. Among their other work are statuary and alters in places such as the Cathedral of St. John the Devine in New York City and St. Ignatius Church at Boston College.

Mr. diBiccari, a shoemaker's son whose first glimmers of artistic talent emerged when he was a child in East Boston, died of heart failure on New Year's Day at Sunny Acres Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Chelmsford. He was 94 and had lived in Arlington for many years before moving to the center a few years ago because of struggles with Alzheimer's disease.

"Most people have an idea of a sculptor neat and fresh in his smock but it's a hard, tiring job," he told the Globe in 1955 as he stood inside his Tavern Road studio.

The building, since torn down, was like a Florentine castle inside. Beneath iron grille work, a thick Renaissance door with a gargoyle knocker opened into rooms that were a far remove from Boston.

"When you walked in, there was authentic Renaissance furniture and a red quarry tile floor," Shure said.

"There was a huge stone fireplace and a long antique table that sat 20 people," said Mr. diBiccari's daughter Linda Shure of Billerica, who is Bob's sister-in-law. "We'd have these Christmas parties for 40-plus people."

Bob Shure was in his early 20s and, by his recounting, a shy art student when he met Mr. diBiccari in the early 1970s.

"I walked into his studio and in two seconds I knew what I wanted to do," he recalled. "I wanted to work with him and study his work. It was like a miracle."

Statues that found their way into churches from Boston to Baltimore and beyond began their journeys as clay that Mr. diBiccari contemplated under the studio's skylights. Once finished, they were cast in bronze or plaster.

"It was an unbelievable place," Shure said. "There were sculptures of past jobs all around, so it was like walking into a museum. Then there was what he called the stage - it was three steps up. That's where he did all the clay work. When you came in and looked at it, all the sculptures he was working on looked grandiose. You felt you were walking into a stage set of a Florentine castle."

All this couldn't have felt more out of reach to Mr. diBiccari and his family years earlier. His parents were Italian immigrants who had eight children. Born in Revere, Mr. diBiccari was growing up in East Boston in the early 1920s when his father noticed that the boy had talent.

Mr. diBiccari's parents pulled their other children out of school to work so the family could afford lessons and a tutor for the young artist. On a full scholarship, he attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, then landed another scholarship that covered the expenses of living for a year in Europe, where he studied in France, Germany, and Italy.

After returning to the United States, he married Evelyn Wilson, who had been a model when he trained at the Museum School, in 1937. She died in 1989.

For a while, the couple lived in New Hampshire. During World War II, Mr. diBiccari worked in a shipyard, and afterward did commercial advertising jobs before forming a partnership with Cascieri. Much of their work was for churches that were built after the war, during the baby boom.

"He was very serious about his work, he was very exacting, but he was also very playful in life," said Mr. diBiccari's daughter Eda of Simsbury, Conn. "He worked a lot, but on the weekends he spent a lot of time with us. He took us into the North End, to Haymarket to buy fruits and vegetables, and to restaurants."

Linda Shure said her father loved children and wanted even more than had populated his childhood home.

"I think he wanted 12, and he got four," she said. "He spent every spare moment with us. He took us to Revere Beach and for pony rides at Fresh Pond on the way from Arlington to his studio on weekends. He was a person who, no matter what went wrong, could make it right. I felt safe with him."

While taking a break from sculpting in his studio, Mr. diBiccari might pull out his guitar and begin to sing.

"He had a beautiful voice," Eda said.

The work, however, was sacrosanct.

"For what he did, he was one of the greatest masters," said Bob Shure, who now runs Skylight Studios in Woburn. "You'd look at his work and think, 'How the heck did he do that?' It looked so effortless. He'd start with a huge hunk of clay that had no shape and all of a sudden, in the blink of an eye, he'd have a perfect portrait of someone."

"For him, sculpture was really a religion," Shure said. "If he saw a piece of someone else's sculpture that he thought could have been better, he would say something. It was like he was defending sculpture. The aesthetics were that important to him."

In addition to his two daughters, Mr. diBiccari leaves another daughter, Ruth Madore of Cambridge; a son, Albert of Keene, N.H.; a sister, Lillian Salza of Lexington; a brother, Bresci of Chelsea; and seven grandchildren.

A service has been held.