La scultura italiana del XX secolo

curated by Marco Meneguzzo
September 24, 2005 – January 22, 2006
Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro, Via Solari 35, Milano

The attention to sculpture and the issues related to it is one of the Foundation's main goals. It is within this context that the initiative of the exhibition 20th-Century Italian Sculpture is placed, which inaugurates, on September 24, 2005, the new Museum of the Arnaldo Pomodoro Foundation at Via Solari 35 in Milan.

The survey of one hundred and nine artists, from Medardo Rosso to the present, with around one hundred and fifty works, conceived by Arnaldo Pomodoro and curated by Marco Meneguzzo, offers the public a journey through the works of the artists who have most contributed to renewing the language of sculpture in the 20th century, divided into three sections: The Pioneers, Modernity, Perspectives.

The first section features the great names of Italian sculpture, from Umberto Boccioni to Giacomo Balla, from Arturo Martini to Marino Marini, from Adolfo Wildt to Fortunato Depero, from Medardo Rosso to Mario Sironi. The second section, which is quantitatively the richest, illustrates the development of sculpture from the postwar period to the 1980s and 1990s. The third section is dedicated to a small group of sculptors, both young and very young, who have developed the language of sculpture by adapting forms and content to the conditions of postmodernity and globalization.

“Today, sculptures – as Arnaldo Pomodoro has said many times – are rather nuclei, or crystals, or eyes, or fires, for the frontier and for the journey of imagination, in the current complexity.” The exhibition, therefore, intends to serve as a moment of reflection on the complexity of the relationship between man and space, and as a testimony to the transformation that the work of sculpture brings to the place where it is positioned.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog, published by Skira, which documents its various moments and serves as a comprehensive tool for consultation, documentation, and reflection on the topic. The volume, 320 pages, accompanied by over 350 illustrations and detailed bio-bibliographical sections, contains critical texts by Achille Bonito Oliva, Luciano Caramel, Flaminio Gualdoni, Marco Meneguzzo, Arturo Carlo Quintavalle, as well as a series of interesting in-depth contributions.