The fine drawing of the line, like a soul, throbbing of indecisions, certainties, of deceived intentions - Fausto Melotti, Linee

Fausto Melotti was an artist, sculptor and theorist among the most versatile in Italy during the 1990s. Through his research, he has contributed in a meaningful way to abstract art diffusion. From the years of training, the interests of Fausto Melotti were eclectic: he graduated in piano and also in electrical engineering at the Milan Polytechnic and studied sculpture in Turin with Pietro Canonica. In 1928 he enrolled at the Accademia di Brera in Milan, where he became great friends with Lucio Fontana. They were both students of Adolfo Widt and always recognised a debt to his teaching. In the 1930s, Fausto Melotti adhered to the Abstraction-Création movement, founded in Paris in 1931 to promote non-figurative art in its various forms. The movement bound a group of abstract milanese artists, with a collective work in the studios of Casorati and Paolucci, in 1935. In the same year Melotti had his first personal work in the Galleria del Milione in Milan. His strong work influenced musical studies; the discipline of harmonic relationships and the variations. Melotti described his poetry in the catalogue of his first personal work as “Angelico poetico”. At the end of the Second World War, Fausto Melotti dedicated himself intensely to the study of ceramics, with important outcomes (Lettere a Fontana, 1944 and the series of Teatrini, which had already been started in the 1930s). With Gio Ponti he tightened a new partnership and together they colloborated on two great projects for la Villa Planchart in Caracas (1956) and la Villa Nemazee in Teheran (1960).  A series of works in Italy and abroad consecrated the universal asthetics of the work of Fausto Melotti: earthenware, majolica and plasters, ceramics, mixed media sculptures and iron, copper, stainless work. His research developped from the rigor of the beginning until researching a more pathetic inspiration and a constant ambiguity between figuration and abstraction. In 1979 Palazzo Reale di Milano hosted its own retrospective and in 1981 Firenze decidicated a retrospective to Forte Belvedere: here Fausto Melotti created La Sequenza, which is today permanently exhibited in giardino dell’Hangar Bicocca di Milano. It is the zenith of the expressive research of Melotti: sculpture, architecture and the theme of variation. Fausto Melotti is also an appreciated writer, with signature collections of aphorisms and poems., such as Lo spazio inquieto of 1971, with a contribution of Italo Calvino and the hotchpotch Linee, published by Adelphi in 1975. The acknowledgements that Fausto Melotti has received in his life are numerous, comprising of the awarding of the Leone d’Oro alla Memoria as part of the 42° Biennale d’Arti Visive in the year of his death. In 2012, the MART of Rovereto gave hommage with work “Angelico geometrico” (the title being an evident hommage to all of his creations, from beginning to end), displaying 100 works with the voices of other artists of the highest calibre, such as: Kenneth Armitage, Alexander Calder, Carlo Carrà, Lucio Fontana, Alberto Giacometti, Piero Manzoni, Marino Marini.