Arnaldo Pomodoro

Arnaldo Pomodoro was born in Morciano di Romagna in 1926 and settled in Milan in 1954. There he met intellectuals such as Alfonso Gatto, Leonardo Sinisgalli, as well as artists such as Lucio Fontana, Bruno Munari, Enrico Baj and many others. Together with his brother Gio’ and with Giorgio Perfetti he formed the 3P group and started making his first jewellery, which he showed at a number of editions of the Milan Triennale, and his first reliefs. These revealed a highly personal form of “script” within the sculpture, and were immediately noted and studied by leading art critics.

In the early 1960s, he ventured into the three-dimensional, investigating the forms of geometrical solids such as spheres and columns: eroding and fracturing the surfaces in an attempt to break the perfect exterior form and reveal the complex interior of the artwork. He became a member of the Gruppo Continuità, dedicated to research into abstraction with a strong interest in physical materials and graphic signs.

In 1966, he was commissioned to make a sphere, three and a half metres in diameter, for the Expo 67 in Montreal. Now in front of the Farnesina in Rome, it marks his shift towards monumental sculpture. This was the first of many of works that have since been put up in public places, in Los Angeles, Milan and Città del Vaticano for example, but also in high profile public spaces such as the United Nations in New York and the UNESCO headquarters in Paris.

He has made many environmental works, ranging from the Progetto per il Cimitero di Urbino (Project for the New Cemetery of Urbino) of 1973, excavated into a hill in Urbino, which was, however, never built, due to local issues and disagreements, and Moto terrenonsolare (Earth and Solar Motion), a long concrete wall for the Minoa Symposium in Marsala, through to the Sala d’Armi (Armory Hall) for the Poldi Pezzoli Museum in Milan, Ingresso nel labirinto (Entering the Labyrinth), dedicated to the epic of Gilgamesh, which he completed in 2011, and Carapace (Carapace), a wine cellar in Bevagna made for the Lunelli family and opened in June 2012.

Arnaldo Pomodoro is exhibited worldwide, including Europe, Unites States, Australia and Japan. He received multiple awards such as the Sculpture Prizes at the Biennials of São Paulo (1963) and Venice (1964); the Japan Art Association’s 1990 Imperial Praemium for Sculpture, and the Lifetime Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award from San Francisco’s International Sculpture Center (2008). In 1992, he received a degree in the humanities honoris causa from Trinity College Dublin, and in 2001 an honorary degree in architectural engineering from the University of Ancona.

The artist is still active today and showed the Grande Portale Marco Polo (Marco Polo Gate, 12 meters high and 10 meters wide) at the Shanghai Expo in 2010. The same year, he also worked on a new series entitled "Continuum", including a five-metres long bas-relief composed of 6 bronze panels, which was designed specifically for the Tornabuoni Art retrospective. In 2016, to celebrate the artist’s 90 years old, a major solo exhibition was held in several locations in Milan. Thirty sculptures were exhibited in the Sala delle Cariatidi of Palazzo Reale, at the Poldi Pezzoli Museum, the Triennale and the Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro, recounting the path of the sculptor from 1955 to today. In Piazzetta Reale, the sculptural complex The Pietrarubbia Group was exhibited for the first time in its entirety. This environmental work was begun in 1975 and was completed in 2015. The work is now installed at the new site of Milan-Bicocca University square.

In 1995 he set up the Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro, with the aim of documenting his work as an artist and, in more general terms, to promote contemporary art, with a particular focus on the work of young artists. He lives and works close by the Darsena dock at the Porta Ticinese in Milan.