ART TALK | 阿纳尔多·波莫多罗
Together with the director of the Museo del Parco di Portofino, Daniele Crippa, in commemoration of Arnaldo Pomodoro.
Pomodoro’s long association with Daniele Crippa began in the 1970s, in his galleries in Cortina, Santa Margherita and Milan, forging a relationship that continued over the years.
Speakers included the Director of the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Beijing Federico Roberto Antonelli and the President of Nuova Artemarea Guicciardo Sassoli, representing the Italian Embassy in Beijing and the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Beijing, together with Ren Jingge, art historian, who assisted Guicciardo Sassoli in moderating the meeting by providing the Chinese translation.
The conference formed part of the programme of the project Developments in the Contemporary and of the Italian artist residencies in China, directed by Guicciardo Sassoli.
Just over a month after the death of the celebrated sculptor Arnaldo Pomodoro (1926-2025), the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Beijing organised, at the Chao Art Center, one of the leading centres for research and development in contemporary art in China, a conference on the great master who created, among the most iconic works of his international career, “Sfera con sfera” for the Montreal Expo of 1967, his first large-scale spherical sculpture, over 3 metres in diameter, later installed in front of the Palazzo della Farnesina in Rome, seat of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation: a masterpiece, a symbol of mystery and strength capable of transforming matter into a universal language that crosses borders and speaks to people of different cultures and traditions.
The venue that hosted the conference, the Chao Art Center, is all the more symbolic in that it holds works by Arnaldo Pomodoro, as well as by major Italian, Chinese and international contemporary artists: from Francesco Clemente to Lucio Fontana and Francis Bacon.
The occasion allowed for insights and first-hand accounts thanks to the presence in Beijing of Daniele Crippa, Founder of the MuPa - Museo del Parco di Portofino and former director of the Galleria Civica di Portofino, who knew Pomodoro and hosted an exhibition devoted to Arnaldo Pomodoro in the Ligurian town in 1983. The meeting, introduced by the director of the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Beijing Federico Roberto Antonelli and moderated by Guicciardo Sassoli de' Bianchi Strozzi, head of the curatorial group “Developments in the Contemporary”, a project of Italian artist residencies in Beijing organised by the Italian Embassy in Beijing and the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Beijing and coordinated by Nuova Artemarea, also featured an introduction on the reception of Pomodoro in China by Ren Jingge (Università IULM - Carlo Bo, Milan).