In Todi, an exhibition pays tribute to Mark Di Suvero

From Aug. 24 to Oct. 27, 2024, Todi (Perugia) pays tribute to Mark di Suvero (b. 1933), among the most important living sculptors linked to the generation of abstract expressionism and active in environmental and public art internationally. The initiative, curated by Marco Tonelli and promoted by the Fondazione Progetti Beverly Pepper, in collaboration with the Municipality of Todi, is held as part of the fourth edition of the Festival of the Arts and features a solo exhibition by the Italian-born U.S. artist, the first in Italy since 1995, spread throughout the center of the Umbrian town.

The exhibition itinerary opens ideally from Piazza del Popolo, which hosts the large sculpture Neruda’s Gate (2005), dedicated to the Chilean poet, who died a few days after Augusto Pinochet’s coup d’état on Sept. 11, 1973. It is a huge gateway, about 8 meters high, painted red, the typical color of many of the American artist’s steel sculptures. The slightly inclined structure is spanned by a long steel beam to create a dynamic effect that accentuates its expressive and dramatic force.

The work, which at the end of the exhibition will remain in Todi under a loan agreement for use, is one of several tributes to famous people that di Suvero has made throughout his long career, such as to scientists and mathematicians such as Galileo, Kepler or Lobotchevsky, composers such as Schubert, Scarlatti or Mozart or other poets such as Baudelaire, Rilke, Marianna Moore, Gerard Manley Hopkins or Yeats. The sculpture also underscores di Suvero’s often explicit political engagement in his works, which, while abstract and geometric, cannot be said to be unrelated to an emotional and existential involvement with the facts of reality and historical events.

The exhibition, titled Spacetime, to emphasize his interest in the concepts of matter and antimatter, relativity, four-dimensional space, gravity and quantum physics, continues inside the Hall of Stones of the People’s Palace where, until Oct. 6, 2024, a number of large-scale paintings from his personal collection and his studio in New York, made in acrylic and phosphorescent paint, between 2014 and 2022, are presented. Such paintings express the playful and participatory sense-the audience can illuminate them with small flashlights making unexpected colors appear-that Mark di Suvero’s poetics has developed since the 1960s, as well as manifest the meaning of “drawing in space” that art historian Rosalind Krauss has given to so much iron sculpture produced in the 20th century.

Mark di Suvero is the author of the poster that will accompany the 38th edition of Todi Festival, one of Italy’s and Umbria’s leading cultural events ranging from theater to music to visual arts, which will open in conjunction with the Festival of the Arts, under the artistic direction of Eugenio Guarducci.

“The choice of Mark di Suvero,” says Marco Tonelli, "as artist and testimonial of the Todi Arts Festival, is motivated not only by the sculptor’s importance in the history of modern and contemporary art and in particular for so-called ’late industrial’ sculpture (of which he is practically the last exponent), but also by a link of continuity with the work of the American sculptor Beverly Pepper, who had chosen Todi and Italy as her second home and place of life and work. Beverly Pepper, in fact, beginning with an interview given in 1998 to Heidi Landecker, never hid her admiration for Mark di Suvero, whom she included in an ideal pantheon alongside sculptors such as Brancusi, David Smith and Richard Serra."

The review underscores the bond that had been forged between Beverly Pepper and Mark di Suvero; the two exhibited together in numerous group shows between 1968 and 1995, set up in U.S. public museums (including theAlbright Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo and the William College Museum of Art in Williamstown), in prestigious private galleries (such as John Weber Gallery or John Berggruen Gallery) or in public spaces dedicated to sculpture such as the Socrates Sculpture Park on Long Island in New York. Not to mention their joint presence in important sculpture collections such as that of theHirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington or the Storm King Art Center near New York. In 1995, Pepper and Suvero’s works were exhibited side by side along the Riva degli Schiavoni on the Grand Canal in Venice during the Centennial Biennale.

A series of free collateral initiatives (by reservation only, T.339.1184278) will be held during the opening period of the exhibition, such as Spacetime tours, guided tours of the exhibition sites, I love Contemporary Art, urban trekking on contemporary art in Todi, Kids Art Day, workshop activities for children ages 4 to 10 and families on contemporary art with a specialized childhood educator.

Accompanying the review is a catalog edited by Marco Tonelli

Mark di Suvero was born in Shanghai on September 18, 1933 to Italian parents(Matilde Millo di Suvero and Vittorio di Suvero). In 1941 he moved with his family to San Francisco. In 1954-56 he attended the University of California at Santa Barbara and then Berkeley and began painting and sculpting. In 1957 he moved to New York, where he discovered Abstract Expressionism, joined the artists’ cooperative collected in the March Gallery, exhibited works in plaster and wax. In 1959 he began creating sculptures out of scrap wood taken from demolished buildings. The following year he is the victim of a serious accident while working, to support himself, on a construction site. In 1963 he is among the founders of the Park Place Gallery. In 1964 he made his first outdoor sculpture, and three years later, once he learned to use cranes and welding techniques, he created the first large outdoor steel sculpture Are YearsWhat? (for Marianne Moore).

In 1971, opposed to the war in Vietnam, he left the United States forEurope. A solo show of his work is organized at the Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum in Eindoven, extending to the city’s gardens, and in 1975 he is the first living artist to exhibit at the Jardin des Tuileries in Paris. In that same year, the Vietnam War ends and he returns to the United States. The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York then dedicates a retrospective to him with works set up in various locations around the city. In 1977 he created the Athena Foundation, an association dedicated to supporting artists who wish to create large-scale sculptures, and the Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City, New York. He receives numerous awards, such as the Lifetime Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award from theInternational Sculpture Center in 2000, and theHeinz Award in the Arts and Humanities in 2005. He lives and works between New York, Petaluma, California, and Chalon-sur-Saône, France.

For all information, you can visit the official website of the Beverly Pepper Projects Foundation.

In Todi, an exhibition pays tribute to Mark Di Suvero

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