Is this a sculpture?

When we talk about sculpture we are instinctively led to think of a solid block of marble that is sculpted with energy by an artist, an example for all Michelangelo’s David. The history of art, however, offers us a very rich and varied range of possibilities. In addition to the lost wax cast bronze, already skilfully worked by the ancient Greeks and the great Renaissance, the materials and techniques are many and the potential almost endless: the artists of the twentieth century were well aware of it, who have ventured into the most varied experiments.

The cycle – curated by the Florentine Civic Museums and MUS. E – proposes a journey through the sculpture of the twentieth century, from the golden totem of Mirko Basaldella to the polychrome ceramics of Lucio Fontana, from the useless machine of Bruno Munari to the light installations of Maurizio Nannucci, to experiment, in the game of art, a very varied set of sculptural techniques. Because as Munari writes,  “[…]my useless machines have always been considered as jokes or rather «games», not even games (games are serious things) but games, just stuff from a small. In fact, they were neither of bronze as it should be a real sculpture, nor of marble, not even painted in oil but in tempera, they were not hung on the wall like paintings, but on the ceiling like chandeliers, in short, they did not know how to catalog them: they were not sculptures, what were they? They were Munari’s toys.”

Here are the details of the meetings:

22 October h16.30 The Useless Machines by Bruno Munari

18 November h16.30 Lucio Fontana and the ceramics of the Sea Horses

16 December h16.30 In the moment: between the full and empty of Remo Salvadori

20 January h16.30 Everything might be different, the art of light by Maurizio Nannucci

17 February h16.30 Between Totem, Idols and Kings, the magic of Mirko Basaldella

17 March h16.30 An elastic wall? The installations of Paolo Masi