nivola Archivi - Museo Nivola

Nivola, Colombo e lo spazio intorno

admin_museo — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 10:30:00 +0000

Within the framework of the new Nivola vis-à-vis programme, conceived to bring Costantino Nivola (1911-1988) into dialogue with key figures in the art world of his time, Museo Nivola presents Nivola, Colombo and the Space Around, on view from 24 July to 25 October 2026.

Curated by Chiara Gatti and Anna Pirisi, in collaboration with the Gianni Colombo Archive in Milan, the exhibition is the core of ROOMS, the first chapter in a three-act narrative conceived by Chiara Gatti, Artistic Director of Museo Nivola, for the Museum’s summer-autumn 2026 exhibition programme.

Developed across three rooms, three environments, three places to traverse and experience, the exhibition explores the theme of space and the experimental language of the environment as a site of relationships between our bodies and the inhabitable dimension that receives us: its perspectives, volumes, voids and light.

Here, then, are Nivola’s Room of Dreams, Gianni Colombo’s Elastic Space, and the Room of Memory, created to activate collective remembrance. This narrative unfolds in three phases, in tripartite rooms, like the rhythmic units of ancient songs. Beginning with shared memory, it develops into a broader reflection on the ways in which we inhabit and perceive space. The audience’s sensory experience comes into contact with the artists’ research and, at the same time, with the space that houses it.

The project’s scholarly rationale stems from a significant coincidence of dates. Costantino Nivola’s first environmental study dates from 1968: Model for the Monument to Antonio Gramsci, made in the same year that Gianni Colombo exhibited his Elastic Space at the Venice Biennale.

Thinking of space in terms of traversal was precisely what Nivola did in the 1960s with his horizontal monuments, such as the project for Piazza Satta. Here affinities between the two masters emerge in the construction and trajectories of light that gives form to space. “A light entering through the window / to dissolve the persistent darkness / of my temple and prison of intimacy / and my waking dreams,” as Nivola put it. In Nivola’s aesthetic investigation, the room becomes a primary measure of space: not merely an architectural setting, but a place built around our presence. Inhabited space thus becomes the essential core of his exploration, a volume designed to welcome, define and place humankind in relation to its surroundings. This idea runs throughout his work, in which architecture, sculpture and everyday life merge in a deeply human vision of space, later materialising in the “little theatres,” based on modular forms and mathematical and proportional relations. Beneath this lies a subtle evocative tension, capable of calling forth an enigmatic, contemplative sphere. The “dream boxes,” the little theatres, explore our descent into an interior – into the perspective that swallows us up – as silent actors in a scriptless performance, suspended in a time in which becoming reveals itself through the shifting of light.

Colombo’s thinking likewise opens onto the theme of experience. “I thought I would work more on the conditions of balance, sensation and the spectator’s relationship to space,” he said, “rather than giving form to a complex visual spectacle with a scenographic character […]. I was seeking the possibility of incorporating this type of sensation into a work to be experienced as an emotional factor and an expressive fact.” (Gianni Colombo, typescript, 1964/65). The full-scale reconstruction of the Room of Dreams, in dialogue with Colombo’s Elastic Space, creates a succession of perceptual experiences – between disorientation, shifting coordinates and illusory vanishing points.

With respect to these works, the third room is designed to welcome collective memory through an act of active citizenship, transforming space from a neutral container into a place for thinking, a device for gathering memories through different languages, voices, gazes, writing and images: a minimal but crucial gesture in the formation of an archive that will, in every sense, be preserved by the museum. The Lavatoio becomes a place of encounter and exchange, where memory, art and community come together in a new shared experience.

Side event
Tribute to Grazia Deledda
Museum, 24 July – 20 September

A century after the Nobel Prize was awarded to Grazia Deledda, Museo Nivola will display, in the permanent collection galleries, the bronze sculpture made by Costantino Nivola in the mid-1970s in tribute to the great writer from Nuoro. On loan from Banco di Sardegna, the work will be shown alongside the summer exhibition in the new skylight space.

Nivola vis-à-vis
Curated by Chiara Gatti

Chapter One: ROOMS
Nivola, Colombo and the Space Around
Lavatoio, 24 July – 25 October 2026
Curated by Chiara Gatti and Anna Pirisi, in collaboration with the Gianni Colombo Archive in Milan

Side event
Tribute to Grazia Deledda
Museum, 24 July – 20 September 2026

Institutional Sponsors
Autonomous Region of Sardinia, Municipality of Orani, Province of Nuoro

Principal Supporter
Fondazione di Sardegna

Special Thanks
Gianni Colombo Archive
Vittoria Soddu
Sardegna Film Commission
Proloco Orani
Angelino Mereu
Cantine Autori del vino

Exhibition Installation
Artigianato & Design di Pietro Fois

Graphic design
Leonardo Sonnoli

Painting
Bioazione di Fabio Milia

Museo Nivola
Via Gonare 2, 08026 Orani (Nu)
T +39 0784 730063
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info@museonivola.it

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Press Office, Museo Nivola

Anna Defrancesco comunicazione
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Graphic project Leonardo Sonnoli Studio
Foto: Gianni Colombo, foto di Oliviero Toscani © Archivio Gianni Colombo, Milano

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NIVOLA vis-à-vis

admin_museo — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 10:30:00 +0000

After the significant cycle of exhibitions focused on three leading figures in international sculpture – Nathalie Du Pasquier, Mona Hatoum and Hannah Levy – the museum in Orani, dedicated to the life and work of one of the masters of twentieth-century Italian art, Costantino Nivola (1911-1988), returns to explore still-unexamined aspects of his practice, linking it to the era he lived through, the trends he embraced, and the other artists whose paths crossed his, in reality or in spirit.

Curated by artistic director Chiara Gatti, with the support of the Scientific Committee, the 2026 summer and autumn programme will place Nivola in dialogue with key figures from the artistic landscape of his time, in a play of gazes suggested by the overall project title, vis-à-vis: intense visual encounters shaped by actual relationships or elective affinities. Here, Nivola’s gaze meets the face of the other; that face reflects personal stories and, at the same time, the person who looks at it, within a logic of reflections that the French philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas called the “epiphany of the face.” The face is the place where the other reveals themself and where, through reciprocal looking, an authentic relationship begins.

“A conversation with Claire Nivola, the artist’s daughter and spokesperson for the family,” says artistic director Chiara Gatti, “gave rise to the idea of working on the elective affinities between Nivola and his contemporaries. It will be essential to orchestrate the new programme around him, given the coincidence with the retrospective devoted to Nivola at Milan’s Triennale this autumn – a meaningful opportunity to propose a harmonious cycle of projects in Orani.”

Nivola is thus placed vis-à-vis with artists who shared his tensions and visions. Against the backdrop of an intuition-rich post-war period, the radical renewal of media – technically but above all expressively – spread among a cohort of “young adventurers,” as Guido Ballo would have called them. Following Fontana, Burri and Tàpies, they manipulated matter through a demiurgic gesture, opening its possibilities towards space and towards a new dimension of space populated by equally new sculptural forms. Abstract art, nuclear art, Spatialism and Concrete Art drew constellations of programmes all marked by an experimental vocation, by the updating of expressive means, and by the spontaneous collaboration of fertile minds active on different fronts, driven to converse with one another in creating – to quote Fontana – the very “luminous and malleable substance” that art is.

Chapter One: ROOMS
Nivola, Colombo and the Space Around Us
Juyly 23 – October 25, 2026

Three rooms, three environments, three places to inhabit with the body. Nivola’s Dream Room, Gianni Colombo’s Elastic Space, and the Room of Memory as a site for activating collective remembrance. Curated by Chiara Gatti and Anna Pirisi, in collaboration with the Gianni Colombo Archive in Milan, the exhibition unfolds in three moments, in tripartite rooms, like the rhythmic units of ancient songs. Starting from shared memory, it develops into a broader reflection on how we inhabit and perceive space. The audience’s sensory experience engages with the artists’ research and, at the same time, with the very space that hosts it.

Scientific rationale: Costantino Nivola’s first environmental study dates to 1968: it is the Model for the Monument to Antonio Gramsci, made in the same year that Gianni Colombo exhibited his Elastic Space at the Venice Biennale.

Thinking about space in terms of passage is what Nivola did in the 1960s through his horizontal monuments, such as the project for Piazza Satta. Connections thus emerge between these masters in the construction and trajectories of light that give space its character. “A light that enters through the window,” Nivola wrote, “to dissolve the persistent darkness / from my temple and prison of intimacy / and my waking dreams.” In Nivola’s aesthetic research, the room takes on the value of a primary measure of space: not a mere architectural environment, but a place built around our presence. Inhabited space becomes an essential core of his thought, a volume conceived to welcome, define and connect human beings with what surrounds them. This idea runs throughout his work, in which architecture, sculpture and everyday life merge into a profoundly human vision of space, later embodied in the “little theatres,” based on modular forms and mathematical and proportional relationships. Beneath the surface, a subtle evocative tension also emerges, capable of calling up an enigmatic and contemplative dimension. The “dream boxes,” the little theatres, therefore explore our descent into an interior, into a perspective that engulfs us, as silent actors in a performance without a script, suspended in a time that betrays its becoming through changing light.

The life-size reconstruction of the Dream Room, in dialogue with Colombo’s Elastic Space, creates a sequence of perceptual experiences between disorientation, shifting coordinates and illusionistic perspectives. In relation to these, the third room has been designed to welcome collective memory through an act of active citizenship, transforming space from a neutral container into a place for thought and a device for gathering memories through different languages, voices, gazes and writing. This is a minimal yet crucial gesture towards forming an archive that will, in every sense, be preserved by the museum. The Lavatoio becomes a place of encounter and exchange, where memory, art and community intertwine in a new shared experience.

Collateral Event
Homage to Grazia Deledda
July 23 – September 20

One hundred years after Grazia Deledda was awarded with the Nobel Prize, the Museum will display, in the rooms of its permanent collection, the bronze sculpture created by Costantino Nivola in the mid-1970s as a tribute to the great writer from Nuoro. The work, on loan from Banco di Sardegna, will be shown alongside the summer exhibitions in the new skylight space.

Chapter Two: FRUITFUL RELATIONSHIPS
Ruth Guggenheim. Light Sculptures
13 November 2026 – 21 March 2027

Coinciding with the major retrospective dedicated to Costantino Nivola by Milan’s Triennale, the museum in Orani will host a project made possible by works that are partly previously unseen and belong to the family, allowing an in-depth exploration of Ruth Guggenheim (born 1917), Costantino Nivola’s wife. Like him, Ruth – trained at the ISIA in Monza – was a visionary experimenter, author of jewel-sculptures born from the craft precision of actual adornments and then projected into the formal dimension of sculpture. The play of references to archaic or vernacular traditions conceals a union of inheritances, between Native American ornaments and Sardinian ritual jewellery, sublimated in abstract composition and in the aesthetics of the little theatre or mobile, informed by pioneering figures such as Louise Nevelson, Marcelle Cahn and Claire Falkenstein. This is an important tribute to a woman of abstraction, linked to Nivola yet independent in her artistic thought. The exhibition will also include a series of portraits of Ruth, in oils and drawings, made by her husband and never before exhibited.

Nivola with Munari and Regina

The Museo Nivola presents a meaningful dialogue, a close encounter between artists who shared an intense experience against the backdrop of one of the most fertile and experimental seasons of post-war Italian art.

Without seeking to provide an exhaustive survey of their careers, the exhibition focuses on a selected group of works and documents that make it possible to revisit the dialogue between the two artists through several current concerns: the dissolution of disciplinary boundaries, the relationship between art and pedagogy, the environmental dimension of the artwork, the dialogue between art and industry, and the creation of new forms of spatial experience. Many of the ideas developed by Munari and Regina between the late 1940s and early 1960s anticipate themes and sensibilities that run through contemporary artistic practices today: the artwork as an open device, lightness as a design strategy, modularity, the mobility of forms, the cross-pollination of languages, and art’s social function. In this respect, the exhibition, curated by Lorenzo Giusti and Chiara Gatti, fits naturally within the context of the Museo Nivola. Not only because of the biographical and cultural convergences that connect the two artists to Costantino Nivola, but because their practices share a vision of art as an experience able to transform the spaces we inhabit and contribute to the construction of a collective sensibility.

Nivola, Munari and Regina took part in the 2nd National Quadriennale of Art in Rome in 1935, a key moment of transition for Italian abstract research. A year later, all three participated with different projects in the International Exhibition of Stage Design at the 6th Milan Triennale of 1936. At the time, Nivola collaborated with Giuseppe Pagano and other masters, producing tempera paintings and murals for the backdrop walls of the exhibition rooms, while Regina exhibited constructions in metal sheets and three-dimensional stage models. The decomposition of form explored by Munari and Regina distinguishes Nivola’s contemporary reliefs, which share with those of his colleagues the practice of building and the discipline of design. Nivola, who founded Harvard University’s Design Workshop in 1954, introducing a teaching approach based on the Bauhaus legacy and free experimentation, had an in-depth understanding of the concept of total space, of aesthetic experience within the places we inhabit, and of the sculptural emotion generated by the “synthesis of the arts.” In 1967, Munari inherited his chair at Harvard, where he was invited to teach for a semester on the same themes.

Despite its intimate scale, the project aims to form part of a reflection on the contemporary meaning of the post-war avant-gardes. Alongside the historical-critical contribution of Nicoletta Boschiero, a member of the museum’s Scientific Committee, voices, thoughts and perspectives will be gathered from curators, museum directors, scholars and artists from different geographical contexts, invited to consider which aspects of these practices remain open, necessary and productive today.

Chapter Three: CORRESPONDENCES
Lacci / Orani 6×6
13 November 2026 – 21 March 2027

In autumn, the Museo Nivola will rethink and present to the public a new installation of its permanent collection which will be partially moved for the major exhibition in tribute to Costantino Nivola scheduled for November at Milan’s Triennale (curated by Cecilia Alemani). It will need to be recalibrated in its layout and content based on the works remaining on site: this will be a valuable opportunity to investigate the holdings kept in storage, highlight works not currently on display, welcome further donations from heirs, and create new connections and narratives among the known works, with unexpected new perspectives. Nearly fifteen years after the collection’s last permanent installation, the museum needs an updated study of its sections. Undertaken by the staff, with the consultancy of architect Alessandro Floris and designer Leonardo Sonnoli, it will offer visitors a different perspective and new opportunities for deeper exploration, examining the subtle transitions between the techniques and languages experimented with by Nivola, including photography. Photography will be at the centre of a collateral section – an exhibition within the exhibition – which, thanks to the collaboration of the Ilisso Archive, will show the public for the first time a rich series of photographs taken by Nivola in the streets of Orani: at the heart of the town, among its people and hidden corners, on the hillside and amid the austere monumentality of the talc quarry.

Collateral Event
Giammarco Cugusi – Portrait of a Community: Orani
Residency and workshop, October-November

The project unfolds in a participatory form. The artist moves through the town, listens to stories, gathers words and opens spaces for discussion. Those who wish to take part are asked to donate a glass from their home: an everyday object imbued with presence, memory and affection.

A word chosen by the person donating the object is engraved on each glass, arising from the meeting and exchange activated through dialogue with the artist. It may be a fragment of the self, a trace that conveys the person’s uniqueness within the community, or a word able to express what the community represents for them. The collected glasses are then arranged on a large communal table. The installation takes shape as a constellation of voices: a silent yet tangible geography in which each element holds a story. The engravings appear as grooves, as traces – almost like a collective vinyl record able to retain and return memory. On the final day, the table is activated through a toast open to everyone. After taking part, each person takes away the glass they used (not their own). In this simple and poetic gesture, the exchange is completed: each person takes care of a fragment of someone else, even without knowing where it came from.

Graphics by Leonardo Sonnoli

L'articolo NIVOLA vis-à-vis proviene da Museo Nivola.

Nathalie Du Pasquier. Volare Guardare Costruire

admin_museo — Sat, 17 May 2025 11:00:00 +0000

Nathalie Du Pasquier. Volare Guardare Costruire
curated by Giuliana Altea, Antonella Camarda, Luca Cheri

Museo Nivola, May 17 – September 14 2025
Opening May 17, h. 12.00 PM

Museo Nivola is proud to present Volare Guardare Costruire (to fly, to look, to build), a site-specific project by Nathalie Du Pasquier, a French artist and designer based in Milan.

Conceived especially for the museum’s spaces, the exhibition takes the form of a retrospective dedicated to the artist’s painting production from her beginnings to the present day. At the same time, it is an environmental installation that merges painting, architecture, and design. The exhibition unfolds through a series of structures designed by the artist, transforming the museum into a space to walk through, explore, and inhabit.

The exhibition thus initiates a dialogue between the artist’s ephemeral architectures and the historical structure of the building – the former washhouse of Orani, now the beating heart of Museo Nivola.

Inside these “rooms” and on the walls of the museum are works created from the 1980s to today, which tell the story of the evolution of Du Pasquier’s visual language: a lexicon made of figuration and abstraction, in which human figures and the narrative dimension gradually give way to the theme of still lifes, made of simple and everyday objects, which delicately evoke the human presence, and then again to geometric shapes and abstract constructions. The whole is bathed in a midday light that gives the paintings a metaphysical air, almost as if we were in front of modern versions of Morandi’s canvases or, in other ways, of the purist ones of Le Corbusier and Ozenfant.

The title, Volare Guardare Costruire, refers to three phases of Du Pasquier’s pictorial production. Volare (to fly) evokes the moment of detachment from the design of design objects towards the freer practice of painting. And it is perhaps no coincidence that many of the works of this phase present scenes seen from above, with a bird’s eye view, a symbol of the power of the imagination, of its ability to soar high and expand freely.

Guardare (to look) refers to a second phase, to the need to abandon purely imaginative scenes to dedicate oneself to a quiet and precise observation of reality, even of the most everyday and apparently insignificant objects, which instead reveal to an interested gaze, extraordinary forms, precious details and the ability to understand within oneself the complexity of existence. They are visions that the artist defines as “very silent and very still”, which invite one to rediscover the pleasure of the sensitive world through silent and attentive observation.

Dissatisfied, at times, with the sensible appearance of reality, Du Pasquier finally dedicates herself to Costruire (to build), creating original structures, small three-dimensional abstract constructions that are then portrayed with the brush, brought back to the two-dimensional plane of her canvases. Thus, she triggers a complex dynamic between reality and representation, which is a wonderful metaphor for painting.

With this exhibition, the Nivola Museum confirms its commitment to promoting the dialogue between art, design and architecture, offering an immersion in the visionary world of an artist who continues to reinvent the rules of seeing and building.

Nathalie Du Pasquier (Bordeaux, 1957) moved to Milan in 1979. Co-founder of the Memphis collective, since the mid-1980s she has devoted herself mainly to painting, developing an unmistakable visual universe where formal research combines with a profound reflection on space and perception. Her works have been exhibited at Villa Noailles Hyères (Toulon, France), Kunsthal Aarhus (Aarhus, Denmark), GFZT Museum of Contemporary Art (Leipzig, Germany), Camden Arts Center (London), Kunsthalle Wien (Vienna) and MACRO in Rome.

Image: Nathalie Du Pasquier, Untitled, oil on paper mounted on canvas, 1998-99

Nathalie Du Pasquier. Volare Guardare Costruire
Curated by Giuliana Altea, Antonella Camarda, Luca Cheri

Institutional Sponsors
Regione Autonoma della Sardegna, Comune di Orani

Main Sponsor
Fondazione di Sardegna

Special thanks to
APALAZZOGALLERY, Brescia
Pace Gallery, New York, Londra

Thanks to the winery “Autori del vino” by Piera Deledda and Pietro Fele

Catalogue
Allemandi

Exhibition Mounting
Artigianato e Design di Pietro Fois

Prints
Bioazione di Fabio Milia

Museo Nivola
Via Gonare 2 08026 Orani (NU)

Opening
May 17, at 12.00 PM
Dates
17 May – 14 September, 2025

Opening Hours
Monday – Sunday, 10.30 AM / 19.30 PM
Closed on Wednesday

Tickets
full 7 €, reduced 5 €
accessibility and free admission information: https://museonivola.it/visita/

Press Office
Sara Zolla | +39 346 8457982 | press@sarazolla.com

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The Nivola Museum turns 30 | Exhibitions, Residencies, Publications, Projects, Festivals

admin_museo — Sat, 17 May 2025 11:00:00 +0000

The Nivola Museum turns 30
Exhibitions, Residencies, Publications, Projects, Festivals
The 2025 program focuses on large international sculptures and connections between Sardinia and the world: Nathalie Du Pasquier, Mona Hatoum, Hannah Levy

In 2025, the Nivola Foundation celebrates its 35th anniversary and the 30 yaars of the Nivola Museum with a series of important activities and events. Starting from May 2025 until 2026, a new cycle of exhibitions curated by Giuliana Altea, Antonella Camarda, and Luca Cheri will develop the discussion on great contemporary sculpture – a theme already highlighted in 2024 with Nairy Baghramian’s “Pratza ‘e Domo” project – bringing to the museum solo exhibition by three extraordinary international artists, different in background and expressive methods: Nathalie Du Pasquier, Mona Hatoum, and Hannah Levy. In the renovated spaces of the Pavilion in the museum’s park, the new artistic residency program will begin with the stay of the duo TARWUK, who is carrying out a research that combines sculpture, painting, and installation. The projects selected by the Direzione Generale Creatività Contemporanea of the Ministry of Culture are getting accomplished:

The ten years work of Armin Linke on the archive of photographer Corrado Calvo, presented in various venues over the years, including at the MMK-Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt in 2012, at the Centre Pompidou in Metz in 2014, and at the Nivola Museum in 2017, will be presented in a volume published by Spektor Books, created with the support of the Italian Council 2024.

Luca Spano, Fabio Barile, and Ezio D’Agostino will bring to the museum the photographic installation-project On the Edge of the Eyelid, winner of the Strategia Fotografia 2024 program.

The performative and interactive installation Arrogalla – Suite. Trame sonore, sviluppi intermediali by Francesco Medda and Carol Rollo will arrive at the museum as part of the PAC 2024 program.

Finally, the return of Here I Stay, the international festival for alternative and independent music, now in its 15th edition, becoming a must-attend event of the Sardinian summer music scene, and of Tutto d’un tratto. Piccolo Festival di Illustrazione, a festival which is offering an exploration of the lively illustration scene in Sardinia.

Nathalie Du Pasquier, Mona Hatoum, and Hannah Levy Preeminent figures of International Sculpture

Nathalie Du Pasquier (Bordeaux, 1954) The only woman in the legendary Memphis group, Nathalie Du Pasquier has reinvented her artistic path in recent decades, shifting her focus from design to visual art. Her works sit at the intersection of painting, sculpture, and architecture, proposing geometric shapes and bold colors that create playful, three-dimensional worlds rich in conceptual implications. At the Nivola Museum, the French artist will set up a thematic journey spanning over 30 years of painting, set within metaphysical architectural installations.

Mona Hatoum (Beirut, 1952) A central figure in the international contemporary art scene since the 1990s, Lebanese-Palestinian artist Mona Hatoum explores themes such as identity, the body, and power dynamics. Hatoum will present at the Nivola Museum a site-specific installation, developed during a residency in Orani, with works that combine local materials and Sardinian artisan techniques, fusing the political and the personal, the global and the local, and transforming everyday objects into powerful metaphors.

Hannah Levy (New York, 1991) The young American artist, Hannah Levy has gained international recognition for the originality of her sculptural language. Her works, often made of steel, silicone, and glass, create contrasts between the cold and the soft, the natural and the artificial. After catching attention at the 2022 Venice Biennale, Levy will present a series of works at the Nivola Museum that explore themes related to the body, sensuality, and industrial design.

Nivola Museum The Nivola Museum in Orani is managed by the Costantino Nivola Foundation, a non-profit cultural institution dedicated to promoting the artistic and human legacy of Costantino Nivola, supporting contemporary art in all its forms, and fostering cultural and social development in the heart of Sardinia. The museum, a complex of pavilions set within the green space of an urban park, houses the most important European collection of works by Costantino Nivola (Orani, 1911 – East Hampton, 1988), graphic designer, art director, and sculptor active in the integration of visual arts and architecture. Nivola was a pivotal figure in the cultural exchange between Italy and the United States in the 20th century. The museum organizes exhibitions dedicated to contemporary art, with a particular focus on design, sculpture, the relationship between the arts, and the connection between humans and the environment. It also hosts public events, educational activities, and research programs, acting as a cultural force oriented toward innovation and social promotion in the heart of the Mediterranean.

Museo Nivola
Via Gonare 2, 08026 Orani (Nu) + 39 0784 730063 | info@museonivola.it

Press Sara Zolla | +39 346 8457982 | press@sarazolla.com

Captions – 2025 Cultural Program at Museo Nivola

1. Portrait of Nathalie du Pasquier. Photo: Ilvio Gallo.

2. Nathalie Du Pasquier, The strange order of things 2, Installation view at Pace Gallery, Geneve, 2020. Photo: Annik Wetter.

3. Nathalie Du Pasquier, Campo di Marte, Exhibition view at MACRO – Museo di Arte Contemporanea di Roma, 2021. Photo: Delfino Sisto Legnani.

4. Portrait of Mona Hatoum, Berlin 2022. Courtesy of Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.). Photo: Jens Ziehe.

5. Mona Hatoum Cage-à-Deu, 2002, Mild steel and painted MDF, 201.5 x 315 x 199.5 cm (79 1/5 x 124 x 78 1/2 in.), © Mona Hatoum. Courtesy White Cube. Photo: Hugo Glendinning.

6. Mona Hatoum, Cube (9 x 9 x 9), 2008, Black finished steel, 181 x 182 x 182 cm (71 1/4 x 71 3/4 x 71 3/4 in.), Installation view at Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin © Mona Hatoum Courtesy Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin. Photo: Uwe Walter, Berlin.

7. Hannah Levy, Documentation of HEEL, originally performed at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, September 30, 2023. HEEL was choreographed by Sigrid Lauren and performed by Sigrid Lauren and Aliza Russell. Photo: Curtis Wallen.

8. Hannah Levy, Untitled, 2024, Stainless steel and glass, 67.5 x 59 x 23″ / 171.4 x 149.9 x 58.4 cm. Courtesy Massimo De Carlo. Photo: Robert Glowacki.

9. Hannah Levy, Untitled, 2021, Nickel-plated steel, silicone, 68 x 74 x 74″ / 172.72 x 187.96 x 187.96 cm. Photo: Michael Tropea.

10. TARWUK, Portrait.

11. TARWUK, Installation view at White Cube Mason’s Yard, London, 2023.

12. TARWUK, Installation view at Halle für Steiermark, Graz, 2023.

13. TARWUK, Installation view at White Cube, Paris, 2023.

14. Here I Stay Festival, 2024. Photo: Francesca Ardau.

15. Here I Stay Festival, 2024. Photo: Francesca Ardau.

16. Tutto d’un tratto, Festival dell’illustrazione. Photo: Paolo Sanna Animamundi.

17. Tutto d’un tratto, Festival dell’illustrazione. Photo: Paolo Sanna Animamundi.

18. Armin Linke e Corrado Calvo, Paparazzi, 2014 – 2025.

19. Arrogalla_foto di Dietrich Steinmetz

20. Luca Spano, Far Away Structures, 2022. Courtesy Luca Spano and Red Lab Gallery.

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ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS. The Modern Prehistory of Costantino Nivola

admin_museo — Sat, 30 Nov 2024 11:00:00 +0000

ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS.
The Modern Prehistory of Costantino Nivola

curated by Giuliana Altea, Antonella Camarda, Luca Cheri, Anna Depalmas, Carl Stein

Museo Civico Giovanni Marongiu – Sala Polifunzionale, Cabras
Museo Nivola, Orani
November 30, 2024 – April 22, 2025

The Mont’e Prama Foundation and the Nivola Foundation are excited to announce the first exhibition dedicated to exploring the connection between Costantino Nivola’s art and the Prehistory of Sardinia. This engaging exhibition showcases a comparison between masterpieces of Neolithic and Nuragic sculpture and architecture, alongside significant works by Nivola. For the first time, it reconstructs the relationship between Nivola and Prehistory, presenting the artist’s sculptures alongside the sources that inspired him, made possible through a series of important loans from both public and private collections, Italian and international.

Anthony Muroni, president of the Mont’e Prama Foundation, states: “This project opens a new path for what concerns the relationships of collaboration and synergy between museum institutions, putting history and the contemporary into dialogue, favouring an integrated reading that is fresh, plural and evocative. We have included this program among the fundamental ones for the current three-year period, willingly dedicating the entire on-site exhibition’s efforts to this collaboration so intense and full of meaning which, by placing Cabras and Orani in close connection during the period in which both exhibitions will remain open, ideally connects all of Sardinia and its visitors.”

“The relationship between Prehistory and contemporary art is one of the key themes of twentieth-century culture – says Giuliana Altea, president of the Nivola Foundation -, and Nivola’s work is an important testimony to this, never studied in this aspect until now. The exhibition On the Shoulders of Giants, born from the collaboration between Fondazione Mont’e Prama and Fondazione Nivola, confirms how the synergy between institutions active in different cultural fields can bring results of great importance.”

The title of the exhibition alludes, in addition to the monumental statues found in Mont’e Prama, to the medieval aphorism according to which we are, compared to the ancients, like dwarves on the shoulders of giants: we can see further than them, but only because we can rise thanks to their greatness. And the sculpture by Costantino Nivola (Orani 1911 – Long Island 1988) has been inspired from the beginning by the anonymous masters of Sardinian prehistory.

Trained as a graphic designer and installation designer in Monza and Milan, Nivola – an anti-fascist exile in the United States since 1939 – began to make sculptures in 1950. In an international cultural climate that, after the destruction of the war, looked to Prehistory as a source of a possible renewal of civilisation, Nivola rediscovered Sardinia and its extraordinary archaeological heritage, placing it as the basis of his art. After the Second World War, in the wake of the opening to the public of the Lascaux caves in France (1948), the call of the distant past attracted artists from all over the world. In the aftermath of a terrifying conflict, with the devastation of entire regions, the launching of two atomic bombs and the looming threat of nuclear disaster, the end of human civilisation seemed a not-so-remote possibility. It brought to mind the moment of man’s appearance on earth.

Thus, with its mysteries, prehistory became a mirror of modern man’s anguish but evoked a positive idea of spirituality and community bonds in contrast with modern materialism, individualism, and dehumanised science. For Nivola, who felt a deep connection with the “primordial” dimension of Sardinia, it was, above all, this positive interpretation of Prehistory that prevailed.

Nivola returned to Sardinia for the first time in 1947. Once again in New York, in contact with Jackson Pollock and the artists of the New York School, at that time equally fascinated by totemism and the origins of humanity, and following the crucial meeting with Le Corbusier, the artist discovered sculpture. In 1950, his first sandcasts were born (plaster or cement sculptures made with sand moulds), which blend elements of Surrealism (Nivola looks to artists such as Ernst and Giacometti) with elements of Sardinian folklore, but above all with the memory of female figurines from the Neolithic era such as the so-called Venus of Senorbì and the Mother Goddess of Porto Ferro.

After 1952, following another six-month stay on the island as a correspondent for the American magazine Fortune, his interest in prehistory peaked. Struck by the Nuragic civilisation, he travelled the length and breadth of the island, taking hundreds of photos, visiting the excavations of the Nuraghe of Barumini, and coming into contact with its discoverer, the archaeologist Giovanni Lilliu.

From this moment on, Nivola will feel like the spiritual heir of the ancient lineage of nuraghi builders and bronze sculptors, delivering to the press and critics an image of himself strongly linked to the reference to Sardinia’s ancestral past. In 1953, his great relief for the Olivetti Showroom in New York transformed the luxurious store on Fifth Avenue into a sort of cave populated by mythical figures no less mysterious than those of Lascaux, full of specific references to the pre-Nuragic and Nuragic civilisations of Sardinia. In the following years and until the end of his life, Prehistory would have remained a constant reference and a perennial stimulus for his research, from the references to Nuragic architecture present in his monumental projects through the development of an original fresco graffito technique up to the solemn and evocative Mothers created starting from the Seventies.

The exhibition
The exhibition, set up simultaneously in two locations, the Museo Nivola (Orani) and the Museo Civico G. Marongiu (Cabras), compares Nivola’s works with the testimonies of Sardinian prehistory that influenced him, presented through original finds, photographs, and multimedia installations curated by the Visual Computing Group of CRS4.

Born from the scientific collaboration between the art historians Giuliana Altea and Antonella Camarda, the prehistoric archaeologists Luca Cheri and Anna Depalmas, and Carl Stein, architect and former collaborator of Nivola, the exhibition presents a unique opportunity to explore the link between Nivola and Sardinia, thanks also to a group of key works by the artist from private American and Italian collections.

“The path – explains Giuliana Altea – follows the development of Prehistory in Sardinia, from the appearance of Humans to the apogee of the Nuragic Civilization. Every moment of the island’s remote past is accompanied by fundamental works by Costantino Nivola, in an ideal dialogue that surprises with the punctuality of the references and fascinates with the beauty of the works on display.”

From the first section, in which Nivola tells his myth of origin through a series of works – including a newly discovered bronze triptych from the 1960s – that refer to Gea and Uranus, the original divine couple, we move on to the age of the first graffiti, which we can still admire today in the domus de janas. “These graffiti,” says Antonella Camarda, “are a constant source of inspiration for Nivola: not only does the artist disseminate his sculptures with engraved motifs reminiscent of petroglyphs, but, from the mid-1950s, graffiti on fresh plaster became one of his favourite techniques for large public decorations, such as the church of Sa Itria in Orani or the playground of the Wise Towers in Manhattan (1964).”

The comparison between some ceramics from the 5th-4th millennium B.C. and the plates that Nivola created with the ceramist Luigi Nioi in 1980 show the continuing fascination for these early signs.

“In Sardinia – continues Anna Depalmas – the presence of menhirs – large ogival monoliths from the pre-Nuragic era to which the exhibition’s second section is dedicated – is ubiquitous. These enigmatic artefacts must have deeply affected Nivola, who cites them in the first sandcasts of the 1950s, and even more directly in the project for Piazza Satta in Nuoro, from 1967.”

At the heart of the exhibition at the Nivola Museum is the Great Mother, the protagonist of the Eneolithic statuary and a central theme in Nivola’s imagination. From the Totems of the 1950s to the Mothers of his late maturity, the artist’s female figures retain the ambivalent charm of their prehistoric ancestors.

The exhibition continues with the parallel, never proposed before, between the sacred wells, Nuragic monuments linked to the cult of water, and the art of Nivola, which takes up some of their structural and detailed elements. “The theme of water,” says Carl Stein, “has always been dear to Nivola: fountains play an important role in the decoration of the Morse and Stiles colleges at Yale University, designed by Eero Saarinen (1960-1962, one of his most ambitious projects), and in that of the Wise Towers in New York (1964). Nivola loved to contrast the abundance and waste of water in the United States with the scarcity of water in Sardinia, which made it precious and fueled the desire for it.”

The section dedicated to the Builder, an almost mythical figure with whom Nivola identified, both as the son of a bricklayer and as the heir of the distant creators of the nuraghi, closes the exhibition at the Nivola Museum and opens that of the Giovanni Marongiu Museum in Cabras. “Nivola,” says Luca Cheri, “sees the very essence of art in the idea of construction. Based on his fascination with Nuragic walls, the Building Blocks series was born in the early 1950s. Numerous sculptures and monuments conceived as spaces to be inhabited also refer to the Nuragic wall, a constant sign of the coexistence, in Nivola – of the memory of Nuragic architecture and the modernist need for an art for the community.”

At the Cabras Museum, which houses the Giants of Mont’e Prama, the exhibition compares the Nuragic sculptures in stone and bronze to those of Nivola. The Nuragic bronzes, whose slender and dry structure would seem to distance them from the solid and compact forms of most of Nivola’s sculptures, actually constitute a recurring model for male figures, with almost literal references – as in the terracottas of the 1970s – or more indirect but still profound.

For Nivola, shepherds, warriors and prehistoric artisans are mythical figures from the time of the Nuraghi who continue to wander the earth, giving energy and inspiration to the artist.

The Mont’e Prama Foundation
The Mont’e Prama Foundation was established in July 2021 by the Ministry of Culture, the Autonomous Region of Sardinia, and the Municipality of Cabras. Its primary responsibilities include managing and developing the Civic Museum and the resources of the Sinis Natural Archaeological Park. The foundation collaborates with the Ministry’s regional offices on protection, research, and conservation efforts. Additionally, it promotes and supports dialogue with various institutions in Sardinian culture to foster cultural, social, and economic growth in Sinis and throughout Sardinia.
It manages the Civic Museum of Cabras, where it recently inaugurated a new exhibition on the Giants of Mont’e Prama, the archaeological areas of Tharros and Mont’e Prama, the hypogeum and the church of San Salvatore, the Spanish tower and the church of San Giovanni di Sinis.
In 2023, it organised the temporary display of one of the Giants of Mont’e Prama at the Metropolitan Museum of Arts in New York. In 2024, the same statue was transferred to the National Archaeological Museum of Madrid, where it will remain on view until January 12, 2025.

The Nivola Foundation
The Costantino Nivola Foundation is a non-profit cultural institution dedicated to promoting Costantino Nivola’s artistic and human legacy, supporting contemporary art in all its forms, and contributing to Sardinia’s cultural and social development.
It manages the Nivola Museum, a complex of pavilions immersed in the greenery of an urban park. It owns the most important European collection of works by Costantino Nivola (Orani, 1911—East Hampton, 1988), a graphic designer, art director, and sculptor active in the integration of visual arts and architecture and a crucial figure in the context of cultural exchanges between Italy and the United States in the twentieth century.
The Nivola Foundation organises exhibitions dedicated to contemporary art, with a particular focus on design, sculpture, the relationship between the arts and the relationship between humans and the environment.
It also carries out a program of public events, educational activities and research, acting as a cultural force oriented towards innovation and social promotion in the centre of the Mediterranean.
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On the Shoulders of Giants.
The Modern Prehistory of Costantino Nivola

Institutional partners
Ministry of Culture, Autonomous Region of Sardinia, Fondazione di Sardegna, Municipality of Cabras, Municipality of Orani, Regional Directorate of Museums of Sardinia, National Archaeological Museum “Giovanni Antonio Sanna” of Sassari, National Archaeological Museum “Giorgio Asproni” of Nuoro, National Archaeological Museum of Cagliari, Menhir Museum of Laconi, CRS4, Soprintendenza Archeologia, belle arti e paesaggio per la Città metropolitana di Cagliari e le province di Oristano e sud Sardegna, Soprintendenza Archeologia Belle Arti e Paesaggio per le province di Sassari e Nuoro

Assistant curators
Antonio Cattari
Luca Poddighe

Exhibition design
Alessandro Floris

Exhibition mounting
Artigianato e Design by Pietro Fois

Graphic Design
Heart Studio

Multimedia Design
Visual and Data-intensive Computing – CRS4

Prints
Biography of Fabio Milia

Shipping
Apice
Tiemme Srl

Insurance
Reale Mutua

Catalogue
Allemandi

Thanks to

Alessandra Carrieri, Noemi Cappai, Silvia Caracciolo, Antonio Cosseddu, Sebastiano Congiu, Federica Doria, Maria Paola Dettori, Michele de Laurentiis, Isabella Fera, Antonio Floris, Elisabetta Grassi, Giuseppina Ianiri, Maura Mereu, Giorgio Franco Murru, Francesco Muscolino, Maria Passeroni, Gianna Saba, Gianfranca Salis, Monica Stochino, Licia Serra, Stefania Soddu, Georgia Toreno, Valentina Uras, Maura Vargiu, Loretta Ziranu
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Information

Mont’e Prama Foundation – Marongiu Civic Museum, Cabras
Via Tharros s.n.c.
09072 Cabras (Or)
0783/290636 | fondazione@monteprama.it – https://www.monteprama.it

Nivola Foundation – Nivola Museum, Orani
Via Gonare 2
08026 Orani (Nu)
+ 39 0784 730063 | info@museonivola.it – http://museonivola.it

Press Office
Sara Zolla | +39 346 8457982 | press@sarazolla.com

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