Pietro Consagra fter his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Palermo, in 1944 moved to Rome, where he took upabstractionism and joined “Gruppo Forma 1” group and became an habitue of the Osteria Menghi, a noted venue for painters, directors, screenwriters, writers and poets between the 1940s and 1970s. In Rome he worked at Mazzacurati’s studio and at Guttuso’s, where he became acquainted with Piero Dorazio, Ugo Attardi, Carla Accardi, Antonio Sanfilippo, Achille Perilli, Mino Guerrini, and Turcato.
Consagra’s sculpture is presented to us as a sculpture of ideas intended, according to his stated artistic plan, to “Express the dramatic rhythm of life today using plastic components as the formal synthesis of man’s actions in contact with the cogs and wheels of contemporary society which demand resolve, strength, optimism, simplicity, clarity”.
In the years following, he took part in countless festivals and exhibitions. In 1998, he created one of his last great works, a marble sculpture over five metres high dedicated to Janus, which now stands in Largo Santa Susanna in Rome.
He was awarded the gold medal for Culture and Art by President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi. As well as being a sculptor, Consagra was also a writer, critic and collaborator in numerous art publications. He was a key figure in the cultural world during a period of decisive historical importance for Italian art in the 1940s, which witnessed the birth of abstractionism.
Consagra died in Milan, the city which had been his permanent residence for ten years.
Porta del Cremlino
