Francesco Somaini Sculptor Foundation Milan
From 3 June to 31 December 2021
The online exhibition created by the Francesco Somaini Foundation documents the salient stages of the collaboration and friendship established between the sculptor and Enrico Crispolti from 1956 to 2005 (the year of the artist’s death), through some personal photos, images of the works preserved in the Crispolti collection, covers of books and catalogs, as well as some letters taken from their monumental correspondence.
Link to the Francesco Somaini Sculptor Foundation
The young Crispolti was struck by the sculptor’s work at the 1956 Venice Biennale, where he was present with two large concrete works in ferric conglomerate placed at the entrance to the Italian Pavilion. A first visit to Somaini’s atelier in Lomazzo follows, an encounter that will transform over time into a long friendship and collaboration, punctuated by numerous exhibition and editorial opportunities. Crispolti will in fact follow the artist in the various stages of the evolution of his creative activity, starting with the presentation of the works of the concretist phase in the personal exhibition at the Galleria La Salita (Rome, 1957), during the informal season (Galleria Odyssia, Rome, 1959 ) and the subsequent proposal of a new plastic research, promptly reported in the Homage to Somaini in the context of the review Alternative current 3 in L’Aquila in 1968.
This research will lead the artist to make a profound reflection on the relationship between sculpture, architecture and urban context, resulting in the “four-handed” drafting of the volume Urgenza nella città (1972 ) . An important moment of their collaboration that will lead, in the following year, the critic to orient his own interests in the field of sculpture as social participation ( Operation 24 sheets and Volterra ’73 ), and the artist to propose new types of work. of environmental vocation, with the conception of the Carnifications of an architecture, of the successive Anthropoammonites, sculpted matrices that generate a trace, and related photomontages of utopian contextualization.
It is no coincidence that Crispolti presented works at the 1976 and 1978 Venice Biennials, as commissioner and then as curator of the Italian Pavilion. Topic dealt with later in various exhibitions up to the exhibition at the Milan Triennale in 2017 ( Francesco Somaini. A sculptor for the city. New York 1967-1976 ).
Crispolti will accompany Somaini’s activity until the last season, preparing the Somaini monograph. The great works. Achievements, projects, utopias (1997) and the IX International Biennial of Sculpture “City of Carrara”. Sculpture, architecture, city (1998). Crispolti is curator with Luisa Somaini of the Catalog Raisonné of the sculpture forthcoming by Skira.
