Arnaldo Pomodoro
La Colonna del viaggiatore, 1960, I, 1960
bronze, 300 × 120 × 28 cm
As the artist himself recalled: “I therefore began to understand that my way was to move the surface, convex and concave, with my own list of signs. I remember that Guido Ballo defined them as 'cuts of infinity'. The first next step comes from the fact that the surface was not entirely written, but rather there were already games between the smooth space and the engraved one". La Colonna del viaggiatore of 1960 represents an extraordinary evolution, which summarizes all the previous elements and investigations. The most dramatic parts – almost telluric openings and crevasses in the material that arches and reveals itself – emerge from a writing of nerves and tendons that is never calligraphic or redundant, but always in tension. It is as if the artist were exercising the speleologist's eye in the splendor of the bronze material, revealing a whole hidden part that lies beneath his skin: an anatomy of ancient and future territory. The bas-relief here significantly takes on the shape of the stele, which includes the elements of the background, the overhang, the sign-matter, the idea of the sediment and the passage of time.
from: L. M. Barbero, Arnaldo Pomodoro. Una tensione discordante, in Arnaldo Pomodoro. 1955-65, exhibition catalogue, edited by L. M. Barbero, Firenze, Forma edizioni, 2019, pp. 31-33.
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