Image: Gallerie d'Italia – Milano
Gallerie d’Italia – Milano is showing 'Arnaldo Pomodoro. Una Vita' until 18 October 2026, presenting a wide survey of the Italian sculptor’s career across more than sixty years. The exhibition brings together monumental sculptures, lesser-known works and archive documents, and is curated by Luca Massimo Barbero and Federico Giani. According to the museum and the related Foundation announcement, the display is organised as a journey through Pomodoro’s artistic development from the mid-1950s to the experiments of the 2000s.
The exhibition is staged at Gallerie d’Italia – Milano, the Intesa Sanpaolo museum in Piazza della Scala, in collaboration with the Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro. The museum’s own text says the project is dedicated to one of the major figures of Italian and international contemporary art of the second half of the 20th century. It also notes that the show includes an antological selection of around 45 works drawn from the collections of Intesa Sanpaolo and the Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro.
The curators have arranged the exhibition to move decade by decade through Pomodoro’s practice, pairing key works with pieces that are less frequently seen and with archival material chosen to prompt new readings of his art. The museum says the installation itself is intended as a re-reading of some of the display methods the artist developed during his career. A group of unpublished sculptures greets visitors at the start of the route, framing the retrospective as both a chronological survey and a look at works not usually foregrounded.
Among the works highlighted on the museum page are two monumental sculptures that are permanently on view in the museum’s octagonal cloister and Alessandro Garden: 'Disco in forma di rosa del deserto n. 1' (1993–1994) and 'Sfera grande' (1966–1967), a fiberglass version of what the museum describes as the first and most important large-scale sphere made by the artist. The exhibition also places three additional works in the caveau, accessible on the third Saturday of each month by reservation: 'Foglio n. 2/C' (1966), 'Rotante massimo, II' (1967) and 'Sfera' (1990).
The accompanying materials situate the show within Pomodoro’s wider career and the centenary context referenced by the Foundation. The artist, born in the Montefeltro in 1926 and later based in Milan, is presented on the museum page as a sculptor whose work moved from the reliefs of the 1950s to fully rounded forms in the early 1960s and then to large-scale bronzes marked by cuts and internal ruptures. The same page also notes his international exhibition history, teaching posts in the United States and works installed in public spaces in Italy and abroad.
' Arnaldo Pomodoro. Una Vita' runs from 29 May to 18 October 2026 at Gallerie d’Italia – Milano. The museum lists admission information on its website and notes that the exhibition catalogue, published by Allemandi, is available online, in Gallerie d’Italia bookshops and in major bookstores.
