Arnaldo Pomodoro. To scratch, draw, write

ABC-ARTE dedicates the exhibition and the catalogue To scratch, draw, write to Arnaldo Pomodoro, one of the most prominent Italian artists.

The exhibition will present a selection of important sculptures from the late 1950s to the present, reconstructing the long and passionate adventure of the artist from the Marches who has made the sign the indisputable protagonist of the surface and the form.

From the early Tavole dei segni of 1957and1960 to the memorable Cronache, 1976, from Papiro I, 1985-1986 to Torre a spirale, 1999, to the gigantic Arco, 2000, Frammenti da “L’arte dell’uomo primordiale” di Emilio Villa, 2004, and to Colonne and Continuum X of 2010, the sign is the absolute protagonist in a sculpture that is able to evolve in a flow of ‘signs not too distant from the symbol, but not too near either’, as the artist Leonardo Sinisgalli wrote, and to compose ‘a disturbing script that we feel to be dense with a new, almost magnetic fascination’. 

Arnaldo Pomodoro’s sign is world famous: his sculptures and ambient installations are present and displayed from the United States to Europe, from Brazil to Japan. His sign is inscrutable and lacking in signifying intentions, a rhythmic grapheme degree zero: it harks back to the ancient past and at the same time alludes to the contemporary field of electronics or music. Detached from the page, its privileged support, the sign is rendered corporeal in the materiality of the sculptures (Euclidean volumes which the artist subjects to incisions, rips and corrosions), on whose surfaces it adapts and engages in dialogue as it explores every possibility of its own communicative power. 

This monograph, published by ABC-ARTE with the collaboration of the Arnaldo Pomodoro Foundation and curated by Flaminio Gualdoni, is enriched with critical essays by Michele Robecchi and Federico Giani. It is lavishly illustrated and marks a fundamental further stage in ABC-ARTE’s survey of the international postwar great masters.