La lunga arte. Francesco Leonetti e Arnaldo Pomodoro

Francesco Leonetti and Arnaldo Pomodoro met for the first time in Milan in 1963. Leonetti had just moved from Bologna at the invitation of Elio Vittorini to start «Gulliver», an international magazine that would involve figures of the caliber of Italo Calvino and Roland Barthes. The project never saw the light of day, but in the meantime a job at Garzanti had allowed him to start putting down roots in the city. That same year, Pomodoro created his first Sfera, and won the International Prize for Sculpture at the 7th Biennial of Sao Paulo, Brazil, which would definitively launch him into the limelight on the international art scene.

Pomodoro and Leonetti are almost the same age and are engaged in an expressive research that is similar in many ways, in which what counts is the polyphony of languages and the experimentalism based on the dialectical relationship between continuity with the past and innovative break. The two immediately formed a deep friendship, a partnership that would not stop until Leonetti's death in 2017.

Through the works and documents on display, the exhibition will tell the story of this friendship and this intellectual exchange that lasted over fifty years, through the many opportunities for collaboration, exchange and mutual enrichment between Pomodoro and Leonetti.

In occasion of the exhibition, il 3 ottobre alle ore 17:30 (Sala Bianca del Collegio Borromeo) l’Almo Collegio Borromeo, Horti e Fondazione organizzano una tavola rotonda per analizzare, attraverso il contributo di studiosi di arte e di letteratura, le ragioni del sodalizio tra Francesco Leonetti e Arnaldo Pomodoro e per discutere sull’interazione tra scrittura e linguaggio plastico che ha caratterizzato la ricerca dei due autori.