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La lunga arte
Arnaldo Pomodoro e Francesco Leonetti

curated by Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro
19 settembre – 30 ottobre 2024
Almo Collegio Borromeo, Pavia

Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro has decided to promote some of the initiatives that will take place during 2024 to celebrate the centenary of the birth of Francesco Leonetti (Cosenza 1924 – Milan 2017), including an exhibition dedicated to the relationship between Leonetti and Pomodoro which will be held in September-Decemberat the Almo Collegio Borromeo of Pavia. Two years after the inauguration of the Horti, a new initiative thus strengthens the collaboration between the Foundation and the Collegio Borromeo, in the name of culture, art and literature.

Francesco Leonetti and Arnaldo Pomodoro met for the first time in Milan in 1963. Leonetti had just moved from Bologna at the invitation of Elio Vittorini to start «Gulliver», an international magazine that would involve figures of the caliber of Italo Calvino and Roland Barthes. The project never saw the light of day, but in the meantime a job at Garzanti had allowed him to start putting down roots in the city. That same year, Pomodoro created his first Sfera, and won the International Prize for Sculpture at the 7th Biennial of Sao Paulo, Brazil, which would definitively launch him into the limelight on the international art scene.

Pomodoro and Leonetti are almost the same age and are engaged in an expressive research that is similar in many ways, in which what counts is the polyphony of languages and the experimentalism based on the dialectical relationship between continuity with the past and innovative break. The two immediately formed a deep friendship, a partnership that would not stop until Leonetti's death in 2017.

Through the works and documents on display, the exhibition will tell the story of this friendship and this intellectual exchange that lasted over fifty years, through the many opportunities for collaboration, exchange and mutual enrichment between Pomodoro and Leonetti.

intero 8 € / ridotto 5 € / gratuito per gli under 26, gli insegnanti, i soci della Fondazione, della Peggy Guggenheim Collection e di ICOM

Info and how to access the exhibition

When: 19 settembre – 30 ottobre 2024

Where: Almo Collegio Borromeo, Pavia

Under the patronage of