Fausto melotti
(Rovereto, 1901 - Milano, 1986)
Fausto Melotti was born in Rovereto (Trento) on the 8th of June 1901. In 1918 he enrolled in the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics at the University of Pisa, a course of studies that he continued at the Politecnico in Milan, where he graduated in Electrotechnical Engineering in 1924. During this period he studied the piano and took up studies of sculpture in Turin under the sculptor Pietro Canonica. In 1928 he enrolled at the Accademia di Brera in Milan, where he was the pupil of Adolfo Wildt with Lucio Fontana, with whom he formed a long friendship. In 1932 he agreed to give a course in modern plastic arts at the Scuola Artigianale in Cantù. In 1935 Fausto Melotti’s cousin Carlo Belli published Kn, a text described by Kandinsky as being “the Gospel of abstract art”. It was the theoretical development of the experimentation undertaken by the abstract artists who, along with Belli and Melotti, met in the Bar Craya in Milan. That same year Melotti joined “Abstraction-Création”, the movement founded in Paris in 1931 by Van Doesburg, Seuphor, Vantogerloo to champion the work of non-figurative artists. Also in 1935, Melotti was among the Milanese artists who exhibited at the first group show of abstract art in the studio of Casorati and Paolucci in Turin and held a solo show in the Galleria del Milione in Milan of sculpture of rigorously contrapuntal inspiration. Melotti encapsulated a sort of “musical abstraction” in the field of the figurative arts. Melotti died on the 22nd of June 1986 and the same year the 42nd Venice Biennale commemorated him with the Golden Lion. His artworks are shown in the most important museums in the world.
Among his relevant exhibitions of these last years : Fausto Melotti: Works from the Olnick Spanu Collection (Consulate General of Italy in New York, 2019); Fausto Melotti. Counterpoint at Estorick (Collection of Modern Italian Art, London, 2019); Fausto Melotti poetica dei segni (Museo della Permanente in Milan, 2017); Fausto Melotti. Quando la musica diventa scultura (Castello di Miradolo, Pinerolo, Italy, 2017); Fausto Melotti (Hauser & Wirth in New York, 2016); Fausto Melotti. Works on Paper and Plaster (Barbara Mathes Gallery, New York, 2013); Melotti guarda Melotti (Museo Marino Marini, Florence, 2013); Melotti (Museo Madre d’Arte Contemporanea, Naples, 2012); Gli irripetibili anni ’60. Un dialogo tra Roma e Milano (Palazzo Reale, Milan, 2011).
