Claude Valsuani: Master Bronze Founder

Claudio Francesco Angelo Rocco Valsuani entered the world on February 18, 1876, in Crescenzago, a small comune northeast of Milan that would later be absorbed into Italy’s industrial capital. His father Carlo Valsuani served as a municipal secretary, a respectable civil service position entirely disconnected from the world of bronze casting. His mother was Adelaide Leschak.

Tragedy struck early. Carlo Valsuani died on January 27, 1886, when Claude was not yet ten years old. This loss left the young boy without a father during his formative years, and the circumstances of his subsequent education in the demanding craft of lost-wax bronze casting remain partially obscured by historical distance. What we know with certainty is that Claude made his way to Paris (the undisputed world capital of fine bronze casting) where he would build an enterprise whose reputation endures more than a century later.

Claude arrived in Paris in 1899 and learned the trade at the Gruet foundry on the Avenue de Châtillon, later serving as chef fondeur at Hébrard. In 1908 he opened his own foundry at 74 Rue des Plantes in the 14th arrondissement, the establishment that would become one of France’s most prestigious foundries. The founding date is documented on the foundry’s own 1929 business letterhead: “FONDEE EN 1908” (Founded in 1908), and the first “C. VALSUANI CIRE PERDUE” stamps appear on castings from the summer of 1908.

Claude Valsuani’s technical mastery attracted the era’s most demanding sculptors:

• Edgar Degas, whose posthumous dancer bronzes rank among the most valuable sculptures in existence
• Rembrandt Bugatti, whose dynamic animal sculptures required exceptional casting skill
• François Pompon, whose revolutionary simplified forms found perfect expression in Valsuani’s precise technique
• Alberto Giacometti and Aristide Maillol, extending the foundry’s prestige into the mid-twentieth century

Claude Valsuani died on September 9, 1923, in Malgrate on Lake Como, at the age of forty-seven. His parish death record describes him as “industriale” (industrialist) residing in Paris, and confirms once more: “figlio di fu Carlo”, son of the late Carlo. His son Marcel continued the foundry’s operations, maintaining the Valsuani reputation for excellence until the establishment’s closure in 2016.