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Lot Essay
Arnaldo Pomodoro's Sfera presents the viewer with a gleaming ball of metal. In its sheen, it resembles a sculpture by Constantin Brancusi, yet gouged into the surface are ruptures revealing the innards of the sphere. These detailings take the form of a sort of 'writing': Pomodoro has painstakingly assembled elements that combine to create a pattern that takes on the appearance of something logical, albeit pertaining to some hidden, alien logic. These recall the whirring working parts of a complex watch; it is as though some acid or erosion has pulled back some of the glistening spherical surface to reveal the heaving interior.
For Pomodoro, disrupting the purity of the exterior of the sphere was crucial to sculptures such as Sfera. As he had explained over twenty years before executing Sfera, 'For me, the sphere is a perfect, almost magical form. Then you try to break the surface, go inside and give life to the form' (Pomodoro, quoted in 'Sculpture: Dissatisfied Aristotle', Time Magazine, 3 December 1965, reproduced online at content.time.com). In Sfera, this intention to 'give life' to the form is in great evidence. The inside of Sfera appears both mechanic and somehow organic. There is a sense that the exposed interior comprises some form of viscera, the pulsing heart of the object. At the same time, the forms themselves, from a compositional point of view, add an intense dynamism to the work. This results in complex plays of light that are only accentuated by the reflections in the more mirror-like areas of the surface.
In creating Sfera, Pomodoro reveals his old debt to the work of Constantin Brancusi, which he had seen in particular during a visit to New York several decades earlier. He had been struck by the purity and pristineness of the sculptures and forms that Brancusi had created; 'at the same time I experienced a deep wish to destroy their perfection,' he explained. 'I imagined them in my mind's eye full of worm holes and corrosion, and then the idea came to me of setting all of my particular signs in the interior of these geometric solids, turning the abstract image of Brancusi inside out' (Pomodoro, quoted in S. Hunter, 'Monuments and Anti-monuments', pp. 57-77, F. Gualdoni (ed.), Arnaldo Pomodoro: Catalogo ragionato della scultura, Vol. I, Milan, 2007, p. 59).
By the time he created Sfera, Pomodoro had gone a long way towards enjoying the reputation that he still enjoys to this day, having become one of the most recognised artists in the world. His 'eroded' sculptures now feature in museums collections and public spaces throughout the world. Looking at Sfera, the constant source of fascination in his surfaces is clear for the viewer to see.
For Pomodoro, disrupting the purity of the exterior of the sphere was crucial to sculptures such as Sfera. As he had explained over twenty years before executing Sfera, 'For me, the sphere is a perfect, almost magical form. Then you try to break the surface, go inside and give life to the form' (Pomodoro, quoted in 'Sculpture: Dissatisfied Aristotle', Time Magazine, 3 December 1965, reproduced online at content.time.com). In Sfera, this intention to 'give life' to the form is in great evidence. The inside of Sfera appears both mechanic and somehow organic. There is a sense that the exposed interior comprises some form of viscera, the pulsing heart of the object. At the same time, the forms themselves, from a compositional point of view, add an intense dynamism to the work. This results in complex plays of light that are only accentuated by the reflections in the more mirror-like areas of the surface.
In creating Sfera, Pomodoro reveals his old debt to the work of Constantin Brancusi, which he had seen in particular during a visit to New York several decades earlier. He had been struck by the purity and pristineness of the sculptures and forms that Brancusi had created; 'at the same time I experienced a deep wish to destroy their perfection,' he explained. 'I imagined them in my mind's eye full of worm holes and corrosion, and then the idea came to me of setting all of my particular signs in the interior of these geometric solids, turning the abstract image of Brancusi inside out' (Pomodoro, quoted in S. Hunter, 'Monuments and Anti-monuments', pp. 57-77, F. Gualdoni (ed.), Arnaldo Pomodoro: Catalogo ragionato della scultura, Vol. I, Milan, 2007, p. 59).
By the time he created Sfera, Pomodoro had gone a long way towards enjoying the reputation that he still enjoys to this day, having become one of the most recognised artists in the world. His 'eroded' sculptures now feature in museums collections and public spaces throughout the world. Looking at Sfera, the constant source of fascination in his surfaces is clear for the viewer to see.