Inside the Work: The Carved Secret of Arnaldo Pomodoro
🇬🇧 Inside the Work: The Carved Secret of Arnaldo Pomodoro
There are artists who add, and others who take away. Arnaldo Pomodoro did both: he built worlds and cracked them open, letting us glimpse what lies within matter.
His name is tied to the gold of bronze, to the clean cut slicing across the surface, to the geometric form that opens as if hiding a mystery. But Pomodoro wasn’t chasing enigma — he sought truth. The kind hidden beneath the gloss of things, beyond the polished appearance of time.
Born in the heart of rural Romagna, in an Italy still without defined borders, Pomodoro grew up between craftsmanship and imagination. He approached art self-taught, starting with jewelry before falling in love with sculpture as a total language. His artistic gesture was never decorative: it was an open wound in silence.
Cutting to Understand
His famous spheres don’t represent perfect worlds. They are broken shells, mechanical chests, metaphors of our era. Their smooth skin splits open, revealing an inside that seems alive — sometimes fragile, sometimes menacing. These are not mere sculptures, but anatomies of the world, dissecting what lies behind order, showing that even harmony needs rupture to exist.
With the calm strength of a master, Pomodoro carved metal as if writing. His cuts speak. Each work is a three-dimensional text to be read with the eyes and understood with the body.
Art as Territory
His works were never meant to be locked in museums. They thrive outdoors — in places of movement, of breath, of daily life. His columns, his discs, his immense forms seem like architectures from an ancient future, landed on Earth to make us reflect.
Pomodoro never feared monumentality, yet always made it intimate, human, readable. It’s no surprise that many of his creations live in public spaces, among people, under sunlight — where art breathes with the world.
Beyond the Artist
Over time, he founded a place — not just physical, but ideal — to protect and share his vision: a space where sculpture becomes dialogue, education, cultural provocation. Pomodoro always believed that art should serve, not just decorate.
And now that his hand has stilled, his works still speak. They don’t ask to be understood — they ask to be felt, to be approached, to be seen beyond the surface. They ask us, ultimately, to be curious. As he was, until the very last day.