Silvio Zoratti - Artist Info

About Silvio Zoratti

  • Biography

    Silvio Peter Zoratti: A Major, New Discovery in 20th c. American Folk Art

    Silvio Peter Zoratti was born in 1896 in the Northeastern Italian province of Udine. At the age of nine he traveled to Austria where he lived with an uncle and earned an apprenticeship certificate as a skilled stonemason. He began working with large masonry crews in Austria and Italy, earning fifty cents a week.

    In 1916 he was drafted in the Italian army and spent one year as a German prisoner of war. It was after his release that he chose to emigrate from Italy to the United States, and in 1919, accompanied by an older friend, arrived at Ellis Island.

    He first settled in Bellevue, Ohio with a sister’s widowed husband where he...

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