Todi, Beverly Pepper columns installed in Piazza del Popolo

In Todi (Perugia), the very central Piazza del Popolo, one of the “postcard places” of Umbria and beyond, has since yesterday seen the presence of the columns of the American artist Beverly Pepper (Brooklyn, 1922): these are four monumental sculptures, between eight and 12 meters high, which constitute a re-edition of the intervention that Beverly Pepper carried out in 1979 and which was entitled Todi Columns. The four iron columns, after exactly forty years, thus soar again in the very center of the medieval city.

"The Todi Columns,“ says Beverly Pepper, ”were a unique event for that time and have remained in the memory of the citizens who still, when they meet me on the street, ask me questions about that moment, about the sculptures and tell me we were not ready, we did not understand.... I would like to give the city of Todi a memory of its experiences, a continuity. For this reason, the columns have been refabricated and will be installed again in the square after 40 years." The history of the installation, after Todi, continued: the sculptures were in fact exhibited in the United States, and to be exact, in Washington, DC, in 1980, during the International Sculpture Conference and at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York in 1987. In the 1990s they returned to Italy for an exhibition in Venice on the occasion of the 1996 Biennale, and then again in Florence in 1999, starring in Pepper’s solo show at Forte Belvedere. The artist later donated the works to the Venice Civic Museums, which then permanently installed them in the courtyard of Spazio Thetis in the Arsenale.

At the time of their first installation, Sam Hunter, historian of modern art at Princeton University, speaking about the artist, emphasized the novelty of her works: “Beverly Pepper undoes certain worn-out clichés about women’s art that might force the qualities of her art into an intimist dimension. Her work does not fit any of the already outdated stereotypes of female vulnerability or passivity. On the contrary it is clearly affirmative, experimental and intensely physical, with aspects indistinguishable from the work of her male colleagues. Her courage and energy are becoming legendary.”

The exhibition of the columns will run through May 12, 2019. In the summer, the four giants will be installed in the Beverly Pepper Park, which will be in augmented on Sept. 14, 2019 in Todi: it will be the first monothematic contemporary sculpture park in Umbria as well as the first Beverly Pepper park in the world. It will connect the Temple of Santa Maria della Consolazione with the historic center. For all information you can visit the website of the Beverly Pepper Project Foundation.

Todi, Beverly Pepper columns installed in Piazza del Popolo

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