Arnaldo Pomodoro was an essential player in the post-war Italian art scene and one of the founding members of the Continuatà movement in Milan, whose members were intent upon forging a relationship between matter and sign.

Born in 1926 and raised in the rural region of Montefeltro, Italy, Pomodoro was inspired by the fissures and crags of the landscape of his upbringing and informed by his studies in engineering and architecture.

He has furthermore acknowledged the influence of the artistic legacy of Renaissance civilization prevalent in his native country, in particular Lorenzo Ghiberti’s bronze Gates of Paradise (1425 – 1452) in Florence: “just as the collection of themes on the Renaissance relief was meant to give a historical overview of events affecting all humanity, Pomodoro’s narratives were intended to be similarly all-encompassing. ‘You could say that I’m trying to imitate the Italian Renaissance,’ he wrote. Comparison to Italian art history is indeed apt. The sense of the monumental, the elaboration of these of the largest dimension, the strong ties to civilization, the underlying commitment to humanistic, artistic, intellectual and philosophical values: these are qualities of the Italian past that Pomodoro willingly embraces” (Mark Rosenthal, ‘The Art of Arnaldo Pomodoro: Essence and Evolution’, Arnaldo Pomodoro, exh. cat., Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, 1983, p. 6).