The Pietro Consagra exhibition in Rome
The frontal approach to sculpture by Pietro Consagra is the fulcrum of the exhibition set up at the Mucciaccia gallery in Rome
After World War II, in Italy, a pioneer of international abstract art proposed a renewal of the classical statuary language, launching the idea of the frontal sculpture as a democratic device, in dialogue with the fruition. It is about Pietro Consagra (Mazara del Vallo, 1920 – Milan, 2005), to which the Mucciaccia Gallery in Rome is dedicating the exhibition Sculpture in relation. Opera 1947-2004.
“Sculpture involves difficulties for even trivial reasons such as travel. Consagra, recognized among Europe, the United States and Japan, was absent in Rome from the 1989 retrospective at the National Gallery of Modern Art”, Explains the curator Francesca Pola.
THE CONSAGRA EXHIBITION IN ROME
The precious collaboration with the artist’s Archive has allowed to bring to light fifty-nine totem innovative cut. To the monument around which to move in contemplation the frontal vision takes over, for Consagra more than a style: an existential horizon; that way equal comparison between work and public which is the basis of contemporary art. One of the Interviews present, in wood and bronze, was at the Venice Biennale in 1960, when the artist won the grand prize for sculpture.
Each Consagra creation takes shape from the origin of the material: green marble from Mexico, black from Belgium, red from Verona, onyx from Pakistan, rose quartz, alabaster, granite, iron, steel. Alongside the sculptures, some paintings, white clay tablets engraved and tempera on fabric combine to map the artist’s stages in an elegant variety.
– Francesca de Paoli