ArtVerona 2024

In its booth (Pav. 11 Booth A4-B3), this year gallery Il Ponte presents a show entirely dedicated to five sculptors: Paolo Icaro, Eliseo Mattiacci, Giuseppe Spagnulo, Mauro Staccioli e Nanni Valentini. During the years the sculpture has represented an important aspect of the contemporary art to which the gallery has dedicated great attention.

They are showed: by Paolo Icaro a stele made of plaster and lead, Interno, 1987, two Lunatici, 1989 and two works on the wall, Treccia, 1981 and Sigillo elicoidale, 1994, focusing the exhibited works on plaster, certainly one of the artist’s favorite mediums, especially starting from the 1980s; by Eliseo Mattiacci two works, Parafulmine, Attirafulmine e Neutro, 1965 – which we could define as a forerunner of all his subsequent work – and Scultura periscopica, 1972-73, played on power and irony; by Giuseppe Spagnulo one large Paesaggio, 1991, one Cerchio spezzato, 2006 and four great drawings realized from 1990 to 2000 with its characteristic black pigment mixed with iron dust and volcanic sand; by Mauro Staccioli, Anello, 1995, iron and concrete, one of his first sculptures dedicated to this form in small dimensions (diameter 100 cm) – the first one has been realized in Andorra in 1991, 12 meters high – and two most recent works Fuso, 2004 and Cerchio imperfetto, 2009 (to which he dedicated an important research), flanked by two works on paper from the 1990s; by Nanni Valentini some stoneware works are presented, including an important and monumental one of the early Eighties and three works of refined elegance from the late Seventies, in which the artist’s expressive strength is fully revealed in the refined use of clay.