Arnaldo Pomodoro, whose bronze spheres decorate prominent public spaces around the world, dies at 98
In a note of condolences, Italian Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli said Mr. Pomodoro's 'wounded' spheres 'speak to us today of the fragility and complexity of the human and the world.'
The Vatican's sphere, which occupies a central place in the Pigna Courtyard of the Vatican Museums, features an internal mechanism that rotates with the wind. 'In my work I see the cracks, the eroded parts, the destructive potential that emerges from our time of disillusionment,' the Vatican quoted Mr. Pomodoro as saying about its sphere.
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The United Nations in New York received a 10-foot diameter 'Sphere Within Sphere' sculpture as a gift from Italy in 1996. That sphere has refers to the coming of the new millennium, the UN said: 'a smooth exterior womb erupted by complex interior forms,' and 'a promise for the rebirth of a less troubled and destructive world,' Mr. Pomodoro said of it.
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Other spheres are located at museums around the world and outside the Italian foreign ministry, which has the original work that Mr. Pomodoro created in 1966 for the Montreal Expo that began his monumental sculpture project.
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Mr. Pomodoro, in Milan in 2016,
Antonio Calanni/Associated Press
Mr. Pomodoro was born in Montefeltro, Italy, on June 23, 1926. In addition to his spheres, he designed theatrical sets, land projects, and machines. He had multiple retrospectives and taught at Stanford University, the University of California Berkeley, and Mills College, according to his biography on the foundation website.
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