Triangolo dai lati curvi, 2006

Iron, wood and paint, 51×50.5×13 cm
Mauro Staccioli Archive Museum, Volterra

From June to November 2006, the sixteenth-century setting of the Villa d’Este hosts the exhibition “Sculpture in Villa” with eight large-scale sculptures by contemporary Italian artists: in addition to Mauro Staccioli, Lucilla Catania, Umberto Cavenago, Nedda Guidi, Luigi Mainolfi, Eliseo Mattiacci, Marcello Mondazzi and Giuseppe Spagnulo. Here, Staccioli presents a large triangle with curved sides, an unused form in his formal lexicon. The sculpture is also conceived with a purposely high base, necessary for the triangle to exceed the height of the villa’s boundary wall (used as a parapet to the promenade), thus appearing to rest on it. Staccioli made other smaller triangles with curved sides but always maintaining the element of the raised semicircle base. This form was also proposed again in 2006, in Uruguay, at the Pablo Atchugarry Foundation. Here, thanks to Marco Niccoli, who at that time was the head of the Foundation’s sculpture section, now a national museum, the sculpture was acquired and became an integral part of the museum collection.

© Enrico Fontolan, Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Insitute, Roma. Courtesy Archivio Mauro Staccioli.