Arnaldo Pomodoro. Il Grande Teatro delle Civiltà

The exhibition Arnaldo Pomodoro. Il Grande Teatro delle Civiltà, curated by Lorenzo Respi and Andrea Viliani with the collaboration of the Foundation, presents a selection of works by the artist which date from the end of the 1950s to the present day. The works, together with the archival materials which can be consulted by the public, evoke his studio/archive.

Conceived for the FENDI headquarters in Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana in Rome, the exhibition is a great autobiographical "theater" – at the same time real and mental, historical and imaginative – whose staging is introduced by four sculptures placed at the four external corners of the Palazzo. Once through the entrance vestibule, the exhibition is divided into two acts and an interlude, corresponding to the two main rooms – which mirror each other – and the connecting passage behind them.

As a whole, Il Grande Teatro delle Civiltà  explores the pervasive interdependence in Pomodoro's practice between the visual arts and the scenic and dramaturgical ones, as well as between the creation of the final work and the conceptual dimension of its project design. Concreteness and utopia, sign and archetype, matter and vision, three-dimensionality of the work and two-dimensionality of the document, sharing in public space and personal research conducted in the studio and in the archive are integrated, outlining a continuum, from which multiple references emerge to the many "civilizations" to which all Pomodoro's works constantly refer: evanescent traces of archaic, ancient and modern, or even simply fantastic civilizations, from which indefinable forms, signs and materials originate, belonging both to archeology and to futurology, which re-establish our knowledge and our imagination, our experience of time and space, history and myth, as well as our relationship, as human beings, with other living species and nature. A great theater in which over seventy years of research by Arnaldo Pomodoro are retraced.

The exhibition was born from the collaboration between Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro and FENDI, as part of a broader partnership aimed at combining respect for the historical legacy with the support and diffusion of contemporary artistic languages and looking for new forms of collaboration based on sustainability and innovation.

On the occasion of the exhibition, a catalogue is published by Skira and FENDI, in collaboration with the Foundation, with texts by Lorenzo Respi and Andrea Viliani.