Arnaldo Pomodoro's exhibition in Rome.

Arnaldo Pomodoro, sculptor between visual and dramaturgical art: The Great Theater of Civilizations.

A spectacle of sculpture and magic is underway in the heart of EUR, Rome. A monumental and metaphysical exhibition that traces the research of one of the most important contemporary sculptors, who is also present and protagonist in the private collection of Palazzo Ripetta. It is "Il Grande Teatro delle Civiltà," this is the title chosen by curators Lorenzo Respi and Andrea Viliani, with FENDI and in collaboration with the Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro, for the staging of Arnaldo Pomodoro's art at the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana.

Matter and utopia: the art of Arnaldo Pomodoro

Arnaldo Pomodoro (Morciano di Romagna, 1926) explores and experiments with matter and imagination, telling of forms and materials that stimulate the imagination and accompany thinking about and representing new possibilities for inhabiting time and space. His peculiar research on solid geometry began in the early 1960s, when he notched the perfection of form and surface of spheres, pyramids, cubes and cones in shiny bronze to reveal their secret inner chaos. It was with the Sfera Grande, monumental with its three and a half meters in diameter, made for the Montreal Expo of 1966 and now in Rome in front of the Farnesina, that Pomodoro began his journey into the great dimension and dialogue with the environment and public space. A journey that will take him to many squares and symbolic places in cities around the world.

Arnaldo Pomodoro in the Palazzo Ripetta collection: art and architecture dialogue in space.

If the exhibition hosted by the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana leads mainly through the more theatrical and dramaturgical aspect of Arnaldo Pomodoro's art with works that evoke archaic, ancient and modern, sometimes fantastic civilizations, the work starring at the entrance of Palazzo Ripetta is instead a manifesto of the author's spatial and architectural vision: "Sculpture, when it transforms the place in which it is placed, truly has a testimonial value of its own time, it succeeds in imprinting a context with itself, to enrich it with further layers of memory." The Sphere that welcomes guests to Palazzo Ripetta is, in Pomodoro's own words, "a magical form. The shiny surface reflects what is around, giving back a perception of space different from the real one, and creates mystery." A constituent and evocative element of the atmosphere of Palazzo Ripetta, an eloquent protagonist that introduces the experience of hospitality and art within the historic walls in the heart of Rome. In fact, art pervades Palazzo Ripetta's past and recent history: the centuries-old architecture speaks to the present with works from the property's private collection, which, in addition to Pomodoro's Sfera, among others includes sculptures by Bruno Liberatore and Sinisca and paintings by 1980s American street art pioneers Phase 2 and Angel Ortiz.

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