Francesco Somaini

This volume brings together the principal writings of the sculptor Francesco Somaini (1926–2005), who devoted one of his most fruitful creative periods to the theme of the city. A pioneer of urban art in Italy and Europe, Somaini pursued his artistic exploration by moving beyond previous artistic traditions, influenced above all by American architecture from the 1960s and 1970s onwards, following his solo exhibition in New York and his monumental sculpture projects in Atlanta, Baltimore and Rochester.His experience abroad took place during a crucial period, characterised by a strong social and political commitment to the reality of metropolitan life. His editions of classics in sociology and urban planning are crammed with marginal notes; his theoretical treatises, veritable manifestos, openly criticise modernity and the sterile symbolism of the International Style, with its megastructural utopias and the devastation of the man-made landscape driven by industrialisation. Somaini hopes, not without a certain urgency, that sculpture will finally take the decisive step and become a form of social critique, with the aim of re-sacralising public spaces.He thus conveys his project ideas through statements of artistic intent, lectures and conferences, but also through drawings of great imaginative power and photomontages, his medium of choice for his proposals for urban design interventions. Through a careful selection of unpublished texts, notes and sketches, Fulvio Irace offers a synthesis and contextualisation of the Lombard master’s original career and his contribution to the international debate on the future of cities.