Arnaldo Pomodoro

ARNALDO POMODORO (Morciano di Romagna, Italy; 1926).
Untitled, 1974.
Steel and gilded bronze with silver patina. Exemplary 1/12.
Signed, dated and justified.
Measurements: 100 x 70 x 11 cm.
In this work the author uses an abstract language, based on irregular geometry, with an organic character both in its layout and colors. It is an open style, whose basic characteristic is the conception of the pictorial surface as a whole, as an open field, without limits and without hierarchy. Thus, as we see here, the pictorial forms are the result of a thoughtful composition and experimentation, with an image of gestural character, not limited to a composition but go beyond, indicating to the viewer that it is about forms, ideas or suggestions that go beyond the boundaries of the purely pictorial.
Arnaldo Pomodoro is an Italian sculptor. He graduated from the Technical Institute of Surveyors in Rimini, and then worked at the Office of Public Works in Pesaro. He became interested in art and scenography, and attended the Art Institute of Pesaro. In 1953, Pomodoro attended a Picasso exhibition held in Milan, at the Palazzo Reale. This exhibition made a strong impression on him, and a year later he moved to Milan, where he joined the artistic community and became friends with Lucio Fontana, Dangelo, Sanesi and Baj, among others In 1959, Arnaldo Pomodoro received a scholarship to study American art, and traveled to the United States for the first time. In San Francisco he met Mark Rothko, who was teaching at the California School of Fine Arts. In New York, Pomodoro met Costantino Nivola and Enrico Donati, who introduced him to artists such as Franz Kline, Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol, among others. Later, in the 1960s, he developed a collaboration with the Marlborough Gallery in New York. In 1963, Pomodoro received the International Sculpture Prize at the VII Biennial of São Paulo and also the National Sculpture Prize at the XXXII Venice Biennial in 1964.In 1966, he was artist-in-residence at Stanford University, and later at UC Berkeley and Mills College. The following year, he created the large Sfera for the Italian Pavilion at the Montreal Expo. This sculpture now stands in front of the Palazzo Farnesina in Rome. That year Pomodoro won the International Sculpture Prize of the Carnegie Institute of Pittsburgh. In 1995 the Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro was created as a cultural and exhibition center dedicated to contemporary art. In 1996, Arnaldo Pomodoro was decorated Knight of the Grand Cross of the Italian Republic.

Some of Pomodoro's works can be seen at the Vatican Museums, Trinity College in Dublin, the United Nations Headquarters and Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., the Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis, the de Young Museum in San Francisco, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tehran, the American Republic Insurance Company in Des Moines (Iowa), the Columbus Museum of Art (Ohio), the University of California at Berkeley, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond (Virginia), Stanford University and Tel Aviv University (Israel).