The exhibition «Arnaldo Pomodoro. The Great Theater of Civilizations, curated by Lorenzo Respi and Andrea Viliani» which Fendi promotes in collaboration with the Arnaldo Pomodoro Foundation to celebrate over 70 years of research by the artist from Romagna. Set up at the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana, in Eur, in its headquarters which is transformed into an autobiographical “theater” that investigates the relationship between the visual arts and the performing arts – dear to the master – supported by an exceptional setting, as is the rationalist architecture of the «square Colosseum», now populated by sculptures, monumental or otherwise, by Pomodoro.
On display documents, photographs, sketches and drawings, many of which are unpublished and which substantiate the installation of about thirty large works created between the end of the Fifties and 2021. For the first time, in fact, precious archival materials come out of the Pomodoro’s Milanese studio to be displayed in the exhibition, which can be freely consulted by visitors in the sliding drawer units set up in the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana. The Grande Teatro delle Civiltà almost appears as a citation of Arnaldo Pomodoro’s debut as a surveyor, and his ability to do manual work, working in the negative on the material to dig beyond the surface, creating sculptures that occupy a space and interact with it. At the same time, the artist’s incessant research on the contribution of multiple civilizations is underlined, archaic (as in the Rotativa di Babilonia of 1991, located outside, on the back of the building, inspired by the Aztec calendars) and modern, surreal, abstract, conceptual and universal.
The setup
The four sculptures have been positioned at the four external corners of the building, at the top of the staircase leading to the entrance Forms of the myth (1983) – The power (Agamemnon), The ambition (Clytemnestra), The car (Aegisthus) e The prophecy (Cassandra) – taken from the scenic machines that were made for the theatrical cycle of Emilio Isgrò, inspired by Aeschylus’ Oresteia, which took place in 1983 on the ruins of the Gibellina square destroyed by the Belìce earthquake. Two other works have been placed in the atrium that tell of Pomodoro’s link with the performing arts: they are the Dido costume (for The Tragedy of Dido, Queen of Carthage by Christopher Marlowe, staged in Gibellina in 1986), and the Creon costume (for Igor’ Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex, performed in Siena in 1988), face each other. Continue towards the monumental fiberglass panel The battles (1995, with references to the warlike geometries of Paolo Uccello), ideally contrasted with the candor of Movimento in the open air and in the depths (1996-97), which was set up symmetrically in the opposite wing of the Palazzo, as if to represent a theatrical work in two acts. Also on display Great table of memory (1959-1965), a reflection on bas-relief and on the ancient technique of fusion on cuttlefish bone (which in Pomodoro derives from his habit with goldsmithing), and The cube (1961-1962), the result of research on elementary forms of Euclidean geometry. And then again Continuum (2010), the last work on the path on the ground floor, which invites us to start over, suggesting the idea of circularity (of the exhibition and of time). On the third floor loggia you meet instead Cuttlefish bone (2011-2021), symbolic matrix of all the artist’s works.