Pericle Fazzini - Matelda

Matelda is a character from the Divine Comedy who accompanies Dante in the last five cantos of Purgatory when the poet is in the Earthly Paradise. Matelda represents the human condition before original sin, and it is she who immerses Dante in the waters of the rivers Lethe and Eunoe to facilitate his passage to the Heavenly Paradise.

This bas-relief by Pericle Fazzini is exemplary in demonstrating the Grottammare artist's exploration of compositional rhythm rather than an objective description of reality. Indeed, one can notice how the description of the woman is generic, marked by a strong iconic character and symbolic connotations. The sculptor is more interested in instilling a swirling rhythm into the space of the work through the movement of the wind, highlighted by the abundance of diagonal lines. The accentuated dynamism of the entire space completes the picture. Fazzini leaves not a single centimeter of the frame static, traversed by the sculptural elements of the clouds in the sky, the movement of the grass, and the rhythmic sequence of the rounded stones.

Pericle Fazzini was born in Grottammare in 1913. His entire career was spent in Rome, where he passed away in 1987. He trained at the Scuola Libera del Nudo. His first major commission came in 1931, when he won a competition to create a monument to Cardinal Dusmet. In 1938, he opened his studio on Via Margutta, where he would remain for the rest of his life. He participated in the Rome Quadrennial and the Venice Biennale. His sculptures are held in important national and international collections, including the Hakone Open Air Museum in Japan, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, the Tate Gallery in London, the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Rome, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Momat in Tokyo, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Montreal.

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