The Original 'Rocky' Bronze Monument

In 1980, Sylvester Stallone proposed to sculptor, A. Thomas Schomberg, that he create a monumental sculpture depicting Rocky Balboa for the movie Rocky III. The first stage of this project was to determine a literal requirement for the visual image in the movie. With Stallone's input, they decided upon the victor's image.

Schomberg called upon his earlier knowledge of classical Greek sculpture to help choose this image. Knowing that Stallone would have limited time to model, Schomberg first began by producing a life mask of the actor's face, a technique used often by the French sculptor, Houdon. He then began the project by sculpting a 30 inch maquette in wax of the victor pugilist, Rocky, in the classic contropposto pose, with arms raised, with a stoic facial expression and generalized features. In other words, classic not romantic. After months of modeling this 30 inch wax maquette, Sylvester Stallone modeled briefly for schomberg in his Colorado studio and gave his final approval of the image.

Schomberg recalls Stallone's first critique of the model, " When Sly arrived at my studio he found a figure that was more representational of his earlier image of Rocky from the previous movies, namely a heavier appearing physique. However, at the time of this modeling session, Sly had worked very hard at chiseling his body into a trimmer and leaner appearance and his comment at that time was, 'I'm going to be a stick and jab kind of boxer.' I then, along with Sly's suggestions, trimmed the figure back furiously to create a more athleticized Rocky Balboa. This then became the final image that you see today."

A mold of this image was then made followed by several bronze castings, as well as numerous plaster images. The next procedure was to enlarge this to the monumental size for the final stages of production. This process, called enlargement or point up, consists of taking countless points from the 30 inch maquette, and multiplying these dimensions by the enlargement scale several times.

The final sculpture was modeled in oil base clay, which is more suitable for the drier Colorado climate. Once the modeling of the 10-foot statue was completed, a final mold was made, and casting in bronze was immediately undertaken. The ROCKY statue stands 12 feet 8 inches from the bottom of the pedestal to the top of the gloves and weighs 1400 lbs.

This entire project from beginning to end was accomplished in 10 months, a rather short time, for this monumental undertaking, but necessary due to the filming schedule of Rocky III.

A. Thomas Schomberg's monumental works are traditionally produced in extremely limited editions.