Work: Mechanics

Description

“I had studied the ancient masters: Fidia, Michelangelo, Donatello, Piero della Francesca, Masaccio. Then I started to study modern masters, first of all Boccioni, the artist who renewed Italian art. I couldn’t rest on my laurels any longer. I had to take a risk, at all costs”, Umberto Mastroianni.

“Mechanics” is a small sculpture made of bronze, approximately 30 centimetres high including the base, which is a 4-centimetre parallelepiped. It was created in 1988 by Umberto Mastroianni and it is kept at the Museo Omero.

As the title suggests, the sculpture is an assembly of abstract shapes that evoke the world of factories and mechanics. Pointy shapes alternate with rounded ones, empty masses with full masses, smooth surfaces to rough ones. The tactile experience is complex due to the huge quantity of geometric variations: circles, trapezoids, arcs, broken lines, either open or closed.

At the top, at the two ends of a dented semi-arc, we find two squared shapes, which are jutted out and counterposed, one being smooth and the other rough. The semi-arc is reproduced at the bottom as well, supporting the horizontal development of the gear. The sculpture is symmetrical and signed by the artist.

In his latest production from the ’80s, Mastroianni focuses his studies on the dynamism of industrial machines, which also evoke military machines: cogwheels, novel gears and original geometrical layouts recall fantastic beasts. In “Mechanics”, our imagination could see a predatory bird, with its eyes, beak, crest and tail. The artist’s signature in engraved in the lower part.

After his young debut as a classical-influenced figurative artist, in the early ’40s Mastroianni embraced an abstract language, also thanks to Futurism. He adopted abstract shapes that in time became soft and round, and then geometric and colourful.

Umberto Mastroianni (1910-1998) was a prolific artist and professor in several Fine Arts Academies. His works are exhibited in Japan, New York and France, whereas in Italy there are 13 cities which host his monuments to the resistance. He was awarded at the Venice Biennale by the Accademia dei Lincei, and received the prestigious “Praemium Imperiale” award in Tokyo. Rome is home to the Museo Mastroianni and in Arpino, the artist’s hometown, the Castello Ladislao houses the Fondazione Umberto Mastroianni.