Background
Fausto Melotti was born on June 8, 1901 in Rovereto, Italy.
Fausto Melotti was born on June 8, 1901 in Rovereto, Italy.
In 1918 he enrolled in the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics at the University of Pisa, a course of studies that he continued at the Politecnico di Milano (Polytechnic University of Milan), where he graduated in Electrotechnical Engineering in 1924. During this period he studied the piano and took up studies of sculpture in Turin under the sculptor Pietro Canonica. In 1928 he decided to pursue sculpture and enrolled at the Accademia di Brera in Milan, where he was the pupil of Adolfo Wildt with Lucio Fontana, with whom he formed a long friendship.
Melotti agreed to give a course in modern plastic arts at the Scuola artigianale in Cantù in 1932.
During the early years of his artistic career, Melotti developed firm ideas about the relationship of abstract art to architecture, music, math and science. Rejecting the traditional sculptural emphasis on volume and form, the sculptures were abstract works in white plaster or thin metal.
Melotti had his first exhibition at the Galleria del Milione in Milan in 1935. That exhibition brought him no critical or public success in Italy, but received a lot of attention in France and Switzerland.
In 1936 Melotti created twelve, seven-foot tall plaster mannequins of a man, entitled "Costante Uomo" (Constant Man) (Second Room, Front), which were first displayed at the Sixth Triennale of Milan.
Between 1941 and 1943 he lived in Rome where he participated in the Figini and Pollini project for the Palazzo delle Forze Armate and, in the meantime, produced drawings, paintings and poems that were together published as Il Triste Minotauro by Giovanni Schweiller in 1944. After the war, he turned his attention to ceramics.
A strong professional and personal relationship was created in this period with Gio Ponti, with whom he worked on two large projects for the Villa Planchart in Caracas (1956) and the Villa Nemazee in Teheran (1960). In 1967 he exhibited a number of newly inspired sculptures at the Galleria Toninelli in Milan. This marked the start of a series of exhibitions in Italy and abroad that quickly brought him success and public awareness of his multifaceted art: sculptures, low reliefs, theatre sculptures, ceramics and works on paper.
In 1979 a solo anthological exhibition was held at the Palazzo Reale in Milan and two years later, in Florence, an exhibition was staged at the Forte Belvedere.
Melotti died on June 22, 1986 in Milan, Italy.
Quotations: “Greek architecture, Piero della Francesca’s painting, Bach’s music, rationalist architecture - these are all ‘exact’ arts.”
