Fausto Melotti

Fausto Melotti (*1901 Rovereto, IT; †1986 Milan, IT) combines visual art with music and poetry, elevating spaces into fields of activity. This he achieves by creating delicate sculptures from diverse materials that, in the viewer's imagination, seem to carry on unendingly in the surrounding space. Like his lifelong friend Lucio Fontana (*1899 Rosario, AR; †1968 Combino, IT), whose slashed canvases gave expression to art's conquest of space, Melotti became a leading exponent of abstract art in 1930s Milan. By that time, Melotti had broken with the notion of block-like sculptures meant to be viewed from a particular angle. His works were becoming lighter, more fragile and at the same time more expansive. His approach, however, is rigorous, and involves translating mathematic order and musical harmony into his compositions. Like a piece of music wafting through space, his works are designed to float on and on in the imagination of the viewer. Rondeau Musical is the expression of that approach. This monumental piece, which owes its varied surface structure to complicated galvanising processes, devises a rhythm that gives the delicate parts the impression of movement. Sitting on a spiral like notes on a score, the individual metal objects appear to glide endlessly onwards and upwards in space.