Luciano Fabro

Currently not on show

Luciano Fabro

Crono, 1991

Cronus
Three pieces of “Levanto” marble and one piece of white marble, 230 x 230 x 200 cm
Photo: Peter Schibli, Basel

Three wedge-shaped sections of dark marble with white veins, mounted one on top of the other, are supported by a fourth wedge of white marble. For all its monumentality, there is something light and even unstable about this sculpture by the Italian artist Luciano Fabro. As such, it also resembles our own world, with its tectonic solidity on the one hand and its fragile equilibrium on the other. Fabro belongs to the Arte Povera movement in art, whose exponents use simple – ‘impoverished’ – materials to create elementary works reduced to signs. The title of the work alludes to the Titan Kronos, who in Greek mythology, among other things, separated heaven from earth – for Fabro, the origin of all art.

1936, Turin – 2007, Milan

Like Francis Bacon, the Italian sculptor, conceptual artist and painter was self-taught. Associated with the Arte Povera movement, from the 1950s onwards he created room installations which generated a poetic expressiveness through the interaction of varied – often very basic – materials and were inspired by nature, mythology and history. Fabro was also the author of numerous theoretical writings on art and was represented at the documenta in 1972, 1982 and 1992.