American audiences are relatively unaware of the work of the talented Italian sculptor and mixed-media artist, Fausto Melotti (1901-1986). Over 20 major overseas museums own Melotti sculptures, but in the United States they are to be found only at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. When Acquavella Galleries in New York City presents Fausto Melotti, an exhibition of more than 65 works on loaned view from the artist’s estate and international museums and private collections from April 16 – June 13, 2008, Americans will finally have an opportunity to appreciate and enjoy this enigmatic artist.
Melotti was a contemporary of Alexander Calder and fellow art student Lucio Fontana. For Melotti, sculpture was “a matter of drawing in space with wire, mesh and thin sheets of metal, and space became a sculptural material just as basic as solid matter,” says Dr. Steven Nash, director of the Palm Springs Art Museum, in his essay for the exhibition’s catalogue. Like Calder, Melotti believed in construction as a modern way of creating sculpture as well as in using negative space as positive form and using mechanical references to express three-dimensional symbols and signs. Additionally Nash comments in his essay that “very significantly, both also shared an interest in Surrealism…. Melotti, whose art, despite its purity of form, shows a penchant for Surrealist narrative and the construction of miniature worlds of drama and mystery.” The artist’s curiosity for what has been referred to as the “landscape of the subconscious” along with some of the vocabulary of his images also closely ties Melotti to some of Alberto Giacometti’s early Surrealist sculpture as in much of Melotti’s work, the delicate structures also seem to be somewhat erased by time passage. As Nash further explains that as Melotti’s career developed, “he took [from the various artistic influences around him] what suited his own instinct for a mode of sculpture that speaks of modernity through clarity of line and constructive techniques yet also delves into the inner realms of human experience.” As a result, he resists categorization.
Fausto Melotti was born in Rovereto in the South Tyrol on June 8, 1901. In 1918 he began his studies in Mathematics and Physics at the University of Pisa, but moved on to the University of Milan where he studied engineering, art and architecture. In 1924, he graduated with a Ph.D. in Electro-technology. In 1928 he entered the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan where he studied under the famous sculptor Adolfo Wildt (1868-1931) and met Lucio Fontana, another student with whom he became life-long friends. Music accompanied Melotti throughout his life from his early studies as a child, to playing music with friends and family (Maurizio Pollini is his sister’s son), to composing sculptures with musical titles. By the 1930s, Melotti’s work was gaining recognition and during this time, he also began creating his first Teatrini (Mini Theaters or Puppet Theaters), using different objects and materials and creating miniature theater scenes in clay or terracotta in small, rectangular boxes. His first solo exhibition was held at the Galleriea del Milione in Milan in 1935. In 1941, Melotti moved to Rome and devoted himself to drawing and writing poetry. During World War II, he experimented with making small figures and vases of ceramic and terracotta; he also began collaboration with Domus, one of the most interesting publications about post-war architectural and aesthetic tendencies for which he remained its art critic for more than 20 years. A collection of his poems was also published in 1944. In 1950, Melotti participated in his first Venice Biennial and his renown as a ceramic artist rose. For the following decade he continued to win awards and exhibit his work, and by the late 1950s, Melotti abandoned work in ceramics and returned to sculpture. His first major retrospective came in 1971 at the Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund and until his death on June 22, 1986, his work was exhibited in Italy and abroad. The day after his death, the XCIII Venice Biennale opened with one of the major solo shows of Melotti’s work, and the Venice Biennial Committee posthumously awarded him with the Golden Lion.
