Italian art history giant Pino Pascali holds a large-scale retrospective exhibition

Pino Pascali once called the typical format of an exhibition “a kind of cemetery,” in which artists hand over their finished products to others who are now responsible for displaying them. So what does it mean that Pascali has now been granted the greatest grave of all – a retrospective? It’s a paradox, to be sure, but it’s also a gift, as this artist’s work is more talked about than seen in large numbers, yet rarely gets this treatment.

Perhaps this is because Pascali’s case is a difficult one for curators. For one thing, the Italian sculptor died when he was too young. Arguably the highlight of his career came when he was killed in a motorcycle accident in 1968 at the age of 32. He left behind him an impressive but smaller body of work—one that was not traditionally conducive to large-scale performances.

Pascali, on the other hand, is classified as Arte Povera because his works incorporate natural and industrial materials. But he was already doing this before Arte Povera was founded. This means that Pascali resists categorization and does not belong to any particular movement at all.

The best way, it seemed, was to keep Pascali’s memory alive in all its chaotic glory. This is exactly what curator Mark Godfrey has done with his major retrospective of the artist at the Fondazione Prada in Milan. It’s a must-see for anyone who cares about European postwar art, and for good reason, it’s likely to become a pilgrimage site for anyone heading to Venice this week.

The exhibition brings together the majority of Pascali’s oeuvre in one space, a feat in itself. However, the exhibition will mostly not take viewers through his career in chronological order, focusing instead on how the artist chose to display his work during his lifetime. Pascali’s approach was unorthodox, to say the least.

An entire section of this rich exhibition features promotional photography alongside Pascali’s sculptures. These are not stodgy portraits.Take for example the work of Claude Abate, who sat next to blue widow (Blue Widow, 1967), a giant spider sculpture covered in faux fur and dyed a vivid blue. Instead of standing next to the work or even honing it into reality, Pascali pretends to tumble underneath his weird spider. (The sculptures themselves are presented with an enlargement of the image.) Pascali seemed to assert that the only way to prevent his sculptures from being buried was to breathe some life into them through interest.

Another section is devoted to Pascali’s exhibition itself, which, as Godfrey points out, sometimes changed. You don’t always get this impression when you walk through the galleries of the Prada Foundation, as the exhibitions don’t change much over the course of their run. But even the objects themselves are attractive to a playful artist whose work, no matter how conceptual, is always motivated by a desire for a better time.

The Fondazione Prada revives an exhibition originally organized by dealer Gian Enzo Sperone in 1966. In reality, none of this worked as it seemed, as Pascali assembled it from scraps he had on hand.No one can burn his 1966 sculpture machine gun For example, (machine gun), because its parts are all recycled from Fiat 500. Actually it’s just a toy.

Pascali’s first attempt at giving life to his work took a very different form. Born in Bari, Italy in 1935, he went on to study set design in Rome. In other words, his works will host the people who perform with them, and it will exist in the world at large, rather than in an isolated white cube. His projects became more ambitious when he began doing design work for film and advertising agencies.

Then, in 1964, he turned to the avant-garde. This transformation would have seemed drastic were it not for the fact that Pascali’s earliest works transformed everyday objects and made them appear human.The Fondazione Prada exhibition opens with a sculpture from that year, made from a champagne bottle with metal legs; let me tell you, its title is Features (Features). They are near a group of strange paintings that bulge as if pregnant. Two of them refer to Billie Holiday, with Pascali depicting the singer as a pair of lips set against a protruding monochromatic area of ​​black and white. They’re a bit pat, though, as Pascali couldn’t quite figure out how to evoke organic qualities without explicitly showing them.

However, it wasn’t long before he was thrown into battle. Over the next three years, he would carve a dolphin sticking out of a wall, conjure a decapitated giraffe through a hewn pillar, and create a bridge out of steel wool, a more common household material.

He received special mention for his last solo exhibition at the 1968 Venice Biennale, where he presented one of his most wonderful steel wool sculptures, prototype or suspension bridge (Prototype or suspension bridge). Composed primarily of interwoven strips covering wooden rectangles, the sculpture effectively evokes minimalism from the United States while softening it. Made up of tight coils of steel wool angled from the ceiling, the piece contains an ominous quality that can be found in much of Pascali’s work. Standing beneath it, people wonder how painful it would be if the suspension bridge fell and hit them on the head.

Pascali has a cunning and evil side that manifests itself in mysterious ways. Unlike his Arte Povera colleagues, Pascali seemed to enjoy introducing earth, rocks and organic matter into the gallery space, and he seemed to be playing with the displacement of nature, twisting it until it suited his needs.

Sankouhe For example, Three Mouths of the River (1967) features an arrangement of iron trays filled with water, resembling a delta. Pascali’s trays, however, hinder the free flow of water due to the space arranged between them.Compare this to Godfrey’s other Arte Povera works on display in this exhibition, such as the sculpture Alighiero Boetti 1967/93 Festive pastriesin which boulders crush aluminum panels, forcing industry to cede power to nature – a stark contrast.

Of course, the perverse nature of Pascali’s work adds some appeal to it. It’s often threatening and sometimes downright terrifying. The artist seems to have realized this – there’s even a photo in the exhibition of Pascali trapped in his columnar creation, with an unseen figure pointing a revolver at his head. But there were times when Pascali’s scare tactics seemed less than ideal.

To be sure, his work belongs to the aggressive masculine style that proliferated in the postwar period.Few people make mistakes “Peace Dove” Missile (1964) For anything other than phallic symbolism, if you don’t get this, you just have to look at the picture of Pascali riding it, Dr. Strangelove— style, as if a man-made bomb was sticking out of his waist.

He was also guilty of racism – he occasionally used raffia to refer to the “primitive” African societies he wanted to channel – and perhaps even conservatism, as he participated in the 1968 Biennale, a time when many Young leftists demonstrated against it. (Violent clashes between police and protesting students defined this version, and in this context it’s hard to forget that Pascali’s father was a police officer.) Godfrey didn’t forgive Pascali for some of his outdated views (in their These views were admittedly wrong and common for the era, but his political beliefs, at least as reflected in the exhibition itself, still need clarification.

The good news is that while we wait for more information on this front, Pascali’s work speaks for itself. The best thing to do is to lighten the conceptual heaviness and bury Heart of Darkness beneath the jokes.

consider Hand bomb (daily), from 1967, one of Pascali’s greatest works in this area. Here’s a grenade stolen by Pascali, along with allegedly handwritten excerpts from his diary. Even though the device doesn’t work properly, with its base unscrewed, getting close to it feels like courting death. To understand more about Pascali’s life, at least in theory, you need to take your own risk.