IL GRANDE TEATRO DELLA CIVILTÀ

2023

Review by Beatrice

On May 12, 2023, FENDI inaugurates the Arnaldo Pomodoro exhibition at its headquarters, the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana in Rome.

The Grand Theater of Civilizations, curated by Lorenzo Respi and Andrea Viliani in collaboration with the Arnaldo Pomodoro Foundation. The exhibition will be freely accessible until October 1, 2023.

The collaboration between the Arnaldo Pomodoro Foundation and FENDI is part of a broader partnership aimed at combining respect for historical heritage with the support and dissemination of contemporary artistic languages and the search for new forms of collaboration based on sustainability and innovation.

Designed for both the interior and exterior spaces of the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana in the EUR district - which has been the Roman headquarters of FENDI since 2015 - the exhibition spans seventy years of the artist's research, presenting itself as an autobiographical "theater," both real and mental, historical and imaginative, in which about thirty works created by Pomodoro between the late 1950s and 2021 are staged, along with a series of archival materials - photographs, documents, sketches, drawings, many of which are unpublished - that evoke the spirit and atmosphere of the artist's studio and archive.

The Grand Theater of Civilizations explores the interconnection, in Pomodoro's practice, between visual arts and performing arts and highlights the relationship between the project dimension of the work and its realization.

A plot from which possible and multiple references to those archaic, ancient, modern, or even fantastic "civilizations" constantly referred to by Pomodoro emerge, giving rise to forms and materials that are both a memory of the past and a vision of the future, reshaping our knowledge and our imaginaries, our experience of time and space, history, and myth.

A starting point to discover Pomodoro's other works located in Rome and around the world, an opportunity to deepen the knowledge of the artist's research and his relationship with the "eternal city": the exhibition is also accompanied by a monographic catalog published by Skira - with an essay by the two curators, critical and bio-bibliographical apparatus, and extensive photographic documentation of the exhibition - which will be available for purchase in Fendi boutiques and directly in the exhibition space. Digitally explorable through a mini-site (http://arnaldopomodoro.fendi.com/) where visitors can also register to attend the free exhibition.