Sculpture: Dissatisfied Aristotle

In Italian, his name means “golden apple,” or more commonly, “tomato.” But his cognomen, insists Arnaldo Pomodoro, has nothing to do with the fact that he has grown famous sculpting massive spheres cast in polished bronze (opposite). Rather, he is a kind of dissatisfied Aristotelian, seeking the true nature of form inside matter. “For me,” he says, “the sphere is a perfect, almost magical form. Then you try to break the surface, go inside and give life to the form.”

Pomodoro, 39, started out making modern jewelry. Slowly his self-taught attempts at sculpture drew recognition, until prizes at the 1963 Sāo Paulo and 1964 Venice biennials won his works places in London’s Tate and New York’s Museum of Modern Art. For Pomodoro, the starting point is always solid geometry; the tension begins as he scars and gouges out his spheres, cylinders, cubes and disks. “The contrast between the polished and torn surfaces is precisely the difficulty of the individual to adapt to a new world,” he feels. What he finds within evokes a strange and curious crystalline imagery drawn from the machine. His slabs look like the innards of computers, his spheres like ball-shaped printing heads for IBM typewriters. He did a facade for a Cologne school that is 78 ft. high by 27 ft. wide and entitled Grand Homage to Technological Civilization. He calls other slabs Radars because they strike him as “capturing feelings.” Rather than stand at odds with the machine, Pomodoro searches for harmony between technological society and man. His sculpture probes for a tactile solution that will satisfy both the intellect and the emotions.