Guido Magnone

95 Years Old

Guido Magnone, born February 1, 1917, in Turin, Italy, and died July 9, 2012 in Clamart, was a French mountaineer and sculptor. Son of Italian immigrants, Guido Magnone arrived in Paris when he was four years old. Having become a cardboard worker, he took up swimming, water polo, and, a gifted sculptor, took courses at the Beaux-Arts. It was only in 1942, at the age of 25, during a chance stay in Chamonix, that he discovered the mountains. He devoted himself to it and became one of the best climbers of his generation, adding to his list of prestigious conquests: first climbs of Fitz Roy in Patagonia, of the west face of the Drus in the Alps, of Makalu in the Himalayas. His rope companions are Lionel Terray, Gaston Rébuffat, Louis Lachenal. Regarding the Fitz Roy, it was reached in 1951 by Lionel Terray and Guido Magnone who achieved the final feat. The ascent must be considered one of the most extraordinary mountaineering feats of all time, not only for the extreme difficulties overcome in free and artificial climbing, worthy of the Petit Dru West Face. In 1957, he took over as head of the National Union of Mountain Centers from Jean Franco, appointed director of the Praz de Chamonix mountaineering and ski school, and participated in the creation of the largest leisure organization for young people, the Union of Outdoor Centers (UCPA), born of the merger between the National Union of Mountain Centers and the French Nautical Union. The infrastructures put in place will contribute to popular dissemination of mountaineering, skiing, boating and diving. "With hindsight, he wrote in 2005, I know that it was the UCPA that brought me the greatest wealth. The twenty years invested in the creation and development of this social action organization have been, in many respects far greater than the 8,000 meters of a Himalayan conquest". Guido Magnone lives between Paris and Saint-Raphaël and from 1977, he returns to his first passion: sculpture, to devote himself fully to it around 1990. He begins to exhibit again in 1996. In 2002, he exhibits his sculptures in Paris , Bourg-la-Reine, Aosta then in Etroubles in 2009.