FAUSTO MELOTTI

Fausto Melotti was born in Rovereto (Trento) on 8 June 1901. In 1928 he enrolled at the Brera Academy in Milan, where he was a pupil of Adolfo Wildt, together with Lucio Fontana, with whom he formed a long association. In 1932 he accepted the assignment by the Cantù School for a course in modern plastic.

 In 1935, in fact, he joined the "Abstraction-Création" movement, founded in Paris in 1931 by Van Doesburg, Seuphor, Vantongerloo with the aim of promoting and spreading the work of non-figurative artists. In the same year, together with the group of Milanese abstractionists, he took part in the first collective exhibition of abstract art in the studio of Casorati and Paolucci in Turin and exhibited in Milan at the Galleria del Milione in his personal sculptures of strictly counterpoint inspiration.

His first exhibition has no counterpart in Italy, but receives attention in France thanks to Léonce Rosenberg and in Switzerland where in 1937 he received the international La Sarraz Award. In the same year, on the occasion of the VI Milan Triennale, he created a key work, the Constant Man, for the Sala della Coerenza designed by B.B.P.R. (Banfi, Belgiojoso, Peressutti, Rogers). Twelve sculptures rhythmically articulate the space in a project that harmonizes color, word and plans, in a complete environmental installation. From 1941 to 1943 he lived in Rome, where he participated in the Figini and Pollini project for the Palace of the Armed Forces and in the meantime he made drawings, paintings and composed poems that with the title "Il triste Minotauro" will be published by Giovanni Scheiwiller in 1944. In after the war he dedicated himself to ceramics and achieved, through a highly refined technique, a very high quality recognized by the numerous awards he received, including the Triennale Grand Prix in 1951, the gold medal in Prague and the one in Munich


In this period, a profound professional and human relationship was deepened with Giò Ponti with whom he collaborated in two major projects for the Villa Planchart in Caracas (1956) and the Villa Nemazee in Tehran (1960). In 1967 he exhibited numerous sculptures of new inspiration at the Toninelli Gallery in Milan. From here begins a series of exhibitions in Italy and abroad that will quickly lead to success and will allow the public to learn about its multi-faceted activity: from sculptures to bas-reliefs, from theaters to works on paper, to ceramics. In 1974 Adelphi published a collection of writings and poems entitled "Lines" which won the Diano Marina Award in 1975. In 1979, a solo anthological exhibition was presented at Palazzo Reale in Milan and in 1981 Florence dedicated a large retrospective to Forte Belvedere.

Melotti died in Milan on June 22, 1986 and in the same month the 42nd Biennial of Visual Arts in Venice gave him the Golden Lion to memory.