5 Aug
Fausto Melotti at Monaco’s Villa Paloma
From 9 July 2015 to 17 January 2016, Villa Paloma will host works by Fausto Melotti. In collaboration with the Fondazione Fausto Melotti, with the participation of Domus magazine and Archivio Ugo Mulas
The Nouveau Musée National de Monaco (NMNM) presents Fausto Melotti, an exhibition devoted to the polymorphous, multifaceted work of one of the greatest Italian artists of the inter-war and post-World-War-II periods. The exhibition brings together around 20 of the artist’s metal sculptures and more than 70 of his ceramic pieces.
The research carried out by the exhibition’s organisers began with a look at the relationship between Melotti and Domus magazine, founded in 1928 by Gio Ponti. The exhibition therefore comprises mainly works which were photographed for publication in Domus between 1948 and 1968 and articles devoted to the artist by the magazine as well as articles written by Melotti himself.
Domus seems to have played a special role in the artist’s career, that of an attentive and sensitive spectator, conscious of the changes occurring in the artist’s studio at 28 Via Leopardi in Milan, where Gio Ponti often went together with his daughter Lisa Ponti. The key stages in this evolution can be clearly seen in the succession of articles about and by Melotti which appeared from 1948 onwards.
The Domus articles were complemented by coverage of his work as an interior designer with Ponti and other architects, and by articles devoted to his ceramic sculptures from the 1940s and 1950s (for example, his teatrini (small theatres) and ceramic plaques) up to the appearance of his new metallic sculptures in the 1960s – always emphasising the regular reappearance of his abstract beginnings. In July 1962, Domus published an article by Melotti in which his poetic language alluded to his apparent silence as an artist following his short and decisive abstract period in the mid-1930s: “We approach and we return (...) towards the numerous interludes (acts of life?), towards the Orphic, Mediterranean hymenaios of geometry with poetry.”
Nearly a year later, another article by Melotti was published in Domus. Considered one of his most programmatic pieces of writing, L’Incertezza (Uncertainty), published in March 1963, serves as a complete manifesto of Melotti’s poetry, allowing the artist to validate the originality of his work within the context of the abstract art movement.
Alongside Domus, Ugo Mulas – represented here through a series of photographs of Melotti’s work – plays a crucial role in the exhibition. The best description of this role was given by critic and publisher Vanni Scheiwiller, who wrote about the relationship between Mulas and Melotti: “Melotti was attached to Ugo Mulas, his photographer (...) The passion and excellence of a great photographer like Ugo Mulas made a significant contribution to the admittedly belated rediscovery of a great sculptor like Melotti.”
The exhibition catalogue will be published in autumn 2015 by the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco. It will be bilingual (French and English) and illustrated with a wide range of archive documents, some of which have never been published before. The catalogue will also include an essay by Valérie Da Costa on Fausto Melotti’s ceramic works, a piece by Eva Fabbris on the articles about and by Fausto Melotti in Domus from 1948, a piece by Cristiano Raimondi on the collaboration between Gio Ponti and Fausto Melotti on Villa Planchart in Caracas, a conversation between Simone Menegoi, Melina and Valentina Mulas, a conversation between Barbara Casavecchia, Alessandro Pessoli and Paul Sietsema, and finally a conversation between Francesco Garutti, Valter Scelsi and members of the Baukuh architecture studio.
NMNM - Villa Paloma
56 boulevard du Jardin Exotique