Armando Pomodoro stages breathtaking show at Rome’s Square Colosseum
Rome, May 26 (EFE).- A retrospective of sculptor Armando Pomodoro has landed at the dazzling Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana, luxury fashion house Fendi’s headquarters in Rome.
‘The Great Theater of Civilizations’ brings together 30 artworks created between the 1950s and 2021 by the famed sculptor.
The show exhibits vast and robust metal structures distributed throughout two rooms of the building that has been dubbed “an aesthetic masterpiece,” by Fendi’s CEO, Serge Brunschwig.
Pomodoro (Morciano di Romagna, 1926) carves vast and highly intricate pieces using bronze and other metals.
Within his work references to Asian calligraphy, prehistoric art and African tribal traditions can all be observed.
When in 1961 he saw an Aztec calendar in Mexico he said: “I see movement through its original instrument, the wheel, source of energy and measure of time.”
“The Civilization which gives this building its name for Pomodoro becomes ‘civilizations’. A theme that crosses space and time, from the remotest past to an imaginary future,” the curator of the show, Andrea Viliani, says.
The retrospective aims to make the works communicate with each other to “rediscover ancient civilizations” from Mesopotamia, Babylonia, the Aztecs, Ancient African civilizations and Greco-Roman arts and culture.
Visitors will not only marvel at the mammoth panels with detailed reliefs but will also get to rummage through drawers where some of Pomodoro’s most iconic works are exhibited, such as his monolith in Copenhagen (1999) or the many bronze fractured spheres scattered across the planet.
The show also honors the building hosting the retrospective by showcasing some of his works for the theater and opera, such as the set and costumes he created for Oedipus Rex (performed in Siena in 1988) or Dido, Queen of Carthage (staged in Gibellina in 1986).
‘The Great Theater of Civilizations’ will run at Rome’s Square Coliseum until Oct. 1.EFE
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