curated by Angela Vettese and Giorgio Verzotti

120 paintings, sculptures and drawings on display: on one side, works by Arnaldo Pomodoro, on the other, works by other artists from his personal collection. Both nuclei will constitute the permanent collection of the Foundation.

The exhibition itinerary develops documenting the two souls of the collection. The section dedicated to the works of Arnaldo Pomodoro with the function of leading the visitor along the stylistic evolution of the master’s work, which is witnessed here in all its most significant passages: from the period of the first suggestions that came from his acquaintance with Lucio Fontana, reading Picasso, Paul Klee, Alberto Giacometti, Costantin Brancusi; from the music of Igor Stravinsky; from beat poetry, from Gregory Corso to Allen Ginsberg and Frank o’ Hara. In addition to sculpture, therefore, between 1949 and the 1960s a range of influences opened up, fueled by frequent trips to the United States, where the artist also obtained prestigious teaching posts and important critical attention such as that of Sam Hunter.

The itinerary is completed by documenting in a very broad way the interests, exchanges and cultural correspondences experienced by Arnaldo Pomodoro and shared with some of the international protagonists of the visual arts, from the second post-war period to today.

The works will range from the Informal, the era in which Pomodoro himself made his debut, touching on the main events of the neo-avant-garde, up to the latest trends, especially the Italian ones.

The first contacts, and the first exchanges with colleagues, took place by sharing poetics: Pomodoro frequented Lucio Fontana and the Milanese environment of the late 1950s, Enrico Baj, Sergio Dangelo, Piero Dorazio, Tancredi, the groups that then represented the most advanced avant-garde, Gastone Novelli and others. However, he soon worked abroad, coming into contact with Georges Mathieu and then, in the United States, with protagonists such as Louise Nevelson, Sam Francis, Mark Di Suvero, David Smith.

The 1960s and 1970s, those of the most experimental researches, if on the one hand bring the artist’s specific sculptural language to maturity, on the other they see him interacting with colleagues who were also very different in orientation: Schifano, Angeli, Paolini, Boetti, Kounellis , the “analytical painting” of Aricò and Morales, the scriptural research of Isgrò, the sculpture of Pardi and Mattiacci.

The new declinations of sculpture, coming to more recent years, are exemplified by the works of Paladino, Maraniello, Nunzio and others, all aimed at the creation of three-dimensional works with extreme inventive freedom in the choice of materials, as in the placement of the work in space.However, the collection does not end with contemporaries; In fact, Pomodoro did not hesitate to also collect the works of those he considered masters and contemporary colleagues; here then are the sculptures of Arturo Martini, Ettore Colla, Mirko Basaldella, in a retrospective gaze that reaches as far as Man Ray, the drawings of Léger, Miró, Licini, the collages of Hans Richter.