Graziano Pompili
Italy
Golden house / Forma viva 2008
steel panels / parking lot at roundabout, Ravne
With its monumental dimensions, the schematised archetypal Golden House by Graziano Pompili integrates sovereignly into the urban city tissue and exposes the issues of public and private in an engaged manner. The rifts between the plates make possible a ‘secret’ view of the inaccessible interior, where a smaller ‘golden’ house made of ceramics is installed. As a peculiar reliquary, it underscores symbolically the industrial tradition of the town, while it expresses the need for individuality and belonging with simplified idioms such as those that characterised the Italian trans-avantgarde in the 1980s.
Graziano Pompili was born in 1943 in Rijeka. When he was three, his family moved to Faenza, the internationally renowned centre of ceramic and plastic design, where he established himself primarily as a sculptor designing terracotta and ceramics. He studied sculpture and graphic arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna. After 1970 he spent long periods of time in Carrara and Pietrasanta, where he learned to work in marble and bronze. He taught ceramics at the Art Institute in Reggio Emilia (Istituto d’Arte Chierici di Reggio Emilia) and sculpture in marble at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, and finally sculpture in sacral art at the Brera Academy in Milan. In Italy, he is known predominantly for his monumental sculptures in private and public spaces. His works have been exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions at home and abroad.
