This artist, Sicilian by birth (Mazara del Vallo 1920 – Milan 2005) but Roman and subsequently Milanese by adoption, is by now considered central to the Italian and international sculpture scene, but this notwithstanding there are many topical aspects of his work that are still worthy of inquiry today. 
It is also for this reason that the exhibition, and the book that accompanies it, aim to place the accent on the sculptor’s activity in the 1960s, setting typical works of the period side by side with Pietro Consagra’s ongoing reflections on the language of sculpture and its relationship with the other arts. In fact the artist’s considerations on comparison with architecture date precisely to these years, a theme central to his activities and without an understanding of which one cannot fully grasp his greatness and conceptual range.
What the public will find on show are about thirty medium-size works dating between the mid fifties and the late sixties: often models of larger versions of the frontal Colloquies and the monochrome Transparent Irons, or sculptures of an environmental nature such as the Inventories which cross the walls as if in an infinite space, in a nowhere. The use of different materials, the increasingly frequent ventures into projects of an architectonic character – though from a clearly sculptural viewpoint – right down to the variety of compositions on a well defined formal plan demonstrate how Consagra was able to step into the interdisciplinary debate in a wholly personal way, with results and theoretical considerations far from foreseen and indeed entirely topical today. The artist was in fact able to respond to variations in the “spirit of the time”, always with coherent formal solutions. If on the one hand he remained faithful to his own initial assumption – on the whole frontality of the work – on the other hand Consagra could immerse himself in the changing debate which, in those crucial decades of the 20^th century, saw art moving from full Modernity to postmodern apprehensions.