The book retraces the inventive richness of Pietro Consagra (Mazara del Vallo, 1920 – Milan, 2005), one of the most seminal figures on the international art scene of the 20th century. It proposes a comparison between different moments in the artist’s creative path, thus making it possible to emphasise both the elements of continuity in his work, but also and above all the specificities of the individual periods, offering a varied panorama of his continuous reinventions of forms and his experimentation with materials. Francesca Pola identifies Consagra’s path not in a purely chronological sense, but rather according to a reading key highlighting the importance of the relationship between sculpture, space and observer: a specific focus on the “location” of the plastic presence in relation to the observer, the fulcrum of the characteristic “frontal sculpture” codified by Consagra starting from his famous Colloqui of the early 1950s and contextually theorised as early as his book Necessità della scultura (1952).

Text in English and Italian.