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Lot Essay
This work is registered in Archivio Arnaldo Pomodoro, Milan, no. AP 270.
Arnoldo Pomodoro , one of Italy ’s most revered sculptors, forged a singular relationship with metal to explore the links between the natural and the machine, and the organic and the artificial. His work combines the intimate and the monumental, and displays complex interiors masked by mirror-polished exteriors. As such, Disco III, Maquette is a poetic tour de force and the embodiment of Pomodoro’s creative process. Its speaks to his primary instincts, pays homage to his training as an architect and illustrates his fixation on time and space. Giovanni Carandente, renowned critic and one of Pomodoro’s earliest enthusiasts, said of the artist’s sculpted works, “The relationship between sculpture and space, between the artwork and the environment that hosts it, has always been stimulating for Arnaldo…” (G. Carandente, Catalogo ragionato della scultura, Tomo I, with English text, Skira, Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro, Milan, 2007, p. 15).
Pomodoro’s sculptures offer up a series of rich experiences; the gilded spheres, arresting aberrations and sheer ingenuity the artist breaths into his work have long set Pomodoro apart. Disco III, Maquette surpasses the caliber of even his most critically acclaimed ‘spheres within spheres’ as the workmanship and sheer presence of this work stirs the imagination and transfixes the mind. Pomodoro has created an exploding star that infinitely splinters across its rounded atmosphere. The gilded surfaces break apart and expose metalworks as rich and intricate as the inside of a clock, and its bronze gears give the allusion of movement.
Constantin Brâncusi influenced Pomodoro’s reverence for polished bronze. After seeing the Romanian sculptors work for the first time in 1959 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Pomodoro dedicated his professional life to deconstructing Brâncusi’s infallibly smooth sculptures. Reflecting on his commitment to reimagine bronze Pomodoro mused, “The perfection of Brâncusi was so beautiful and mysterious…at a certain moment I said to myself, really this perfection of the form in our time is inappropriate; it has to be destroyed. For me, the ‘destruction’ element in form was my most important discovery, and the most authentic both in terms of myself and my times” (A. Pomodoro, quoted in S. Hunter, Arnaldo Pomodoro, New York, 1982, p. 52). The destruction creates lacerations in the metal, which Pomodoro has always asserted must be understood as a form of writing.
On a formal level, Pomodoro’s work reveals the artist’s complex investigations into material and space. Long intrigued by the idea of using negative space to sculpt, an approach made clear in the nooks and crannies that are points of curiosity in the works such as the present example. Pomodoro used the lost-wax technique to sculpt the areas that will in fact be empty spaces in the final work, creating a strange and fascinating dichotomy, a tension and balance between the act of creation and the act of destruction. Indeed, the contrast between the highly-polished surface and the negative space of the void that is as intricate is what gives Pomodoro’s sculptures their sense of mystery and intrigue.
Arnoldo Pomodoro , one of Italy ’s most revered sculptors, forged a singular relationship with metal to explore the links between the natural and the machine, and the organic and the artificial. His work combines the intimate and the monumental, and displays complex interiors masked by mirror-polished exteriors. As such, Disco III, Maquette is a poetic tour de force and the embodiment of Pomodoro’s creative process. Its speaks to his primary instincts, pays homage to his training as an architect and illustrates his fixation on time and space. Giovanni Carandente, renowned critic and one of Pomodoro’s earliest enthusiasts, said of the artist’s sculpted works, “The relationship between sculpture and space, between the artwork and the environment that hosts it, has always been stimulating for Arnaldo…” (G. Carandente, Catalogo ragionato della scultura, Tomo I, with English text, Skira, Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro, Milan, 2007, p. 15).
Pomodoro’s sculptures offer up a series of rich experiences; the gilded spheres, arresting aberrations and sheer ingenuity the artist breaths into his work have long set Pomodoro apart. Disco III, Maquette surpasses the caliber of even his most critically acclaimed ‘spheres within spheres’ as the workmanship and sheer presence of this work stirs the imagination and transfixes the mind. Pomodoro has created an exploding star that infinitely splinters across its rounded atmosphere. The gilded surfaces break apart and expose metalworks as rich and intricate as the inside of a clock, and its bronze gears give the allusion of movement.
Constantin Brâncusi influenced Pomodoro’s reverence for polished bronze. After seeing the Romanian sculptors work for the first time in 1959 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Pomodoro dedicated his professional life to deconstructing Brâncusi’s infallibly smooth sculptures. Reflecting on his commitment to reimagine bronze Pomodoro mused, “The perfection of Brâncusi was so beautiful and mysterious…at a certain moment I said to myself, really this perfection of the form in our time is inappropriate; it has to be destroyed. For me, the ‘destruction’ element in form was my most important discovery, and the most authentic both in terms of myself and my times” (A. Pomodoro, quoted in S. Hunter, Arnaldo Pomodoro, New York, 1982, p. 52). The destruction creates lacerations in the metal, which Pomodoro has always asserted must be understood as a form of writing.
On a formal level, Pomodoro’s work reveals the artist’s complex investigations into material and space. Long intrigued by the idea of using negative space to sculpt, an approach made clear in the nooks and crannies that are points of curiosity in the works such as the present example. Pomodoro used the lost-wax technique to sculpt the areas that will in fact be empty spaces in the final work, creating a strange and fascinating dichotomy, a tension and balance between the act of creation and the act of destruction. Indeed, the contrast between the highly-polished surface and the negative space of the void that is as intricate is what gives Pomodoro’s sculptures their sense of mystery and intrigue.