Mondo d'acciaio by Emilio Isgrò - Fondazione Brescia Musei

14 December 2023 - 14:00

Parco del Viridarium, Museo di Santa Giulia

Information and Reservations

The CUP - Single Reservation Centre answers Monday to Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Holidays excluded.

+39 030 8174200

cup@bresciamusei.com

An initiative promoted by: Municipality of Brescia, Brescia Musei Foundation, Alleanza Cultura and Feralpi Group.

Thanks to:

Studio tecnico Turotti, Technical co-ordination of the realisation and installation of the work

Bottega del ferro di Bianchetti Pierfilippo, Company that realised the work

The artwork

The Municipality of Brescia, Fondazione Brescia Musei and Feralpi Group present a preview, in the presence of the author, of the work by Emilio Isgrò: Mondo d’acciaio (World of Steel), at the Santa Giulia Museum.

Completing the Isgrò cancella Brixia route (23 June 2022 – 16 April 2023), temporary installations within the Palcoscenici Archeologici (Archaeological Stages) format, the last work of this itinerary that the master proposes in Brescia, discovering the Latin origins of the city, is now installed.

In Santa Giulia, in the Viridarium – Sculpture Park, which in addition to numerous artefacts and funerary monuments from the Roman era already houses Michelangelo Pistoletto’s Third Paradise and Ariel Schlesinger’s Untitled, on the green ridge stretching northwards is the large Mondo d’acciaio (Steel World), a steel globe world emerging from the lawn, which thanks to its powerful 4-metre diameter is in proportionate balance with the vast and monumental space in which it stands. Almost like a ball that instead of rolling is pinned to the ground by the earth’s axis, on the meridians and parallels made of solid steel the work presents the opaque surfaces of the landmasses, the plates of the continents, on which the master, using the usual lexicon of erasure, covers the names of the individual cities. All except one, that of Brescia, which he leaves in evidence with its Latin name, Brixia, as if only this city among all could be known and could survive the oblivion of erasure. The artist, faced with the grandeur of the archaeological remains of ancient Brixia, which he has frequented since at least 1957 and which he has seen progressively excavated, restored, enhanced and narrated over time, questions the determining force of the origins in the development of history and claims its fundamental role.

With his work, the Master intends to give the city a chance for an autonomous and recognisable history, fully deserved by what remains of it and how Brescia has been able to protect the past in constant dialogue and confrontation with its contemporaneity.

The Roman roots that characterise Brixia are very deep and still very evident today, and the artist pays tribute to it by praising its strong value as a cultural and civic community among all, in a historical archaeological area that is now a UNESCO heritage site.