Arnaldo Pomodoro is an Italian sculptor He was born in 1926 in Morciano, Emilia Romagna. From the mid-1940s he studied stage design and worked as a goldsmith, while also serving as a consultant for the restoration of public buildings in Pesaro. He first exhibited his work when he moved to Milan in 1954. During this period, he met the artists Sergio Dangelo, Enrico Baj, and Lucio Fontana. In the late 1950s Arnaldo Pomodoro visited New York and Europe, meeting Alberto Giacometti in Paris. In 1963, he was awarded the International Sculpture Prize at the São Paulo Bienal.
Arnaldo Pomodoro had a retrospective in 1975 at Milan’s Rotonda della Bisana. His work since the 1970s has demonstrated a fascination with basic geometric shapes, such as discs, cubes, and columns, which often grow to huge proportions. His large outdoor installations tend to modify familiar scenes, such as in the Urbino Cemetery, Copenhagen’s Amalienborg Square, New York’s U.N. Plaza, and the Paris Palais-Royal. Alongside his internationally successful career in sculpture, he has worked as a set designer. Productions featuring his designs include Gluck’s “Alceste” in Genoa (1983), Ahmed Shaqwi’s “Passion of Cleopatra” in Gibellina (1989) and Eugene O’Neill’s “Plays of the Sea” in Rome (1996). Pomodoro lives in Milan.
