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Arnaldo Pomodoro, one of Italy’s most prominent contemporary artists, has died at the age of 98.<\/p>\n
Pomodoro died at home in Milan on Sunday, the eve of his 99th birthday, according to a statement from Carlotta Montebello, director general of the Arnaldo Pomodoro Foundation.<\/p>\n
Best known for his\u00a0massive and shiny bronze spheres with clawed out interiors which decorate iconic public spaces from the Vatican to the United Nations, the artist\u00a0sought\u00a0to comment on the superficial perfection of exteriors and the troubled complexity of interiors.<\/p>\n
In a note of condolences, Italian Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli said Pomodoro’s \u201cwounded\u201d spheres \u201cspeak to us today of the fragility and complexity of the human and the world.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Vatican\u2019s sphere, which occupies a central place in the Pigna Courtyard of the Vatican Museums, features an internal mechanism that rotates with the wind. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIn my work I see the cracks, the eroded parts, the destructive potential that emerges from our time of disillusionment,\u201d the Vatican quoted Pomodoro as saying about its sphere.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The United Nations in New York received a 3.3-meter diameter \u201cSphere Within Sphere\u201d sculpture as a gift from Italy in 1996.\u00a0Pomodoro described it as\u00a0\u201ca smooth exterior womb erupted by complex interior forms,\u201d and \u201ca promise for the rebirth of a less troubled and destructive world.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Other spheres are located at museums around the world and outside the Italian foreign ministry, which has the original work that Pomodoro created in 1966 for the Montreal Expo that began his monumental sculpture project.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In addition to his spheres, Pomodoro designed theatrical sets, land projects and machines, as well as a controversial fiberglass crucifix for the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in Milwaukee, Wisconsin – featuring a four-and-a-half-meter diameter crown of thorns which hovers over the figure of Christ.<\/p>\n
The artist\u00a0had multiple retrospectives and, according to his biography on the foundation website, taught at Stanford University, the University of California at Berkeley and Mills College.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ADVERTISEMENT Arnaldo Pomodoro, one of Italy’s most prominent contemporary artists, has died at the age of 98. Pomodoro…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":8133,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[8067,648,1032,1033,171,2219,9455,9456,1038,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-8132","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-artist","9":"tag-arts","10":"tag-arts-and-design","11":"tag-design","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-italy","14":"tag-obituary","15":"tag-sculptor","16":"tag-sculpture","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-unitedstates","19":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114733024789790038","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8132\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}