Nivola and New York, the suggestive exhibition in Orani

The exhibition scheduled in Orani from 15 March (Museo Nivola) and entitled “Nivola and New York. From the Olivetti Showroom to the Incredible City ".

Among the protagonists of twentieth-century Italian sculpture and graphics, Nivola, an exile in the United States because he was anti-fascist, began a career as a "sculptor for architecture" which saw him collaborate with the greatest masters of Modernism. In 1954, his prominence for the Olivetti showroom in New York marked the beginning of the overseas success of Made in Italy.

Nivola's relationship with New York, the "incredible" and "wonderful" city that welcomed him in 1939 after his escape from Italy, deeply marked his work as an artist. And the center of the Orani exhibition is Nivola's work for the Olivetti showroom on Fifth Avenue, created by the BBPR studio in 1954, a cornerstone of post-war Italian art and architecture and a symbol of a new approach to business communication. .

23 meters long and 5 meters high, the monumental semi-abstract frieze, made with the sand casting technique (plaster sculpture from a sand matrix), was the central element of an installation that symbolized the Mediterranean sky, sea and beach . After the closure of the Olivetti store in 1969, it was relocated in 1973 to the Science Center of Harvard University, at the behest of the architect Josep Lluís Sert.

On the occasion of the exhibition, a faithful reconstruction was made on a 1: 1 scale thanks to the use of visual computing, 3D printing and videomapping technologies. With its 101 square meters of extension, it is one of the largest projects of three-dimensional reproduction of cultural heritage with robotic milling ever made.

THE REVIEW - "The exhibition - explains the curator Giuliana Altea - revolves around this extraordinary relief, extended to cover an entire wall of the museum, which has exactly the same measurements as the work. The reproduction will allow you to closely observe the details of a sculpture whose original, preserved at Harvard, is hardly visible to the general public. Its creation is the result of the digital humanities project 'Nivola X Olivetti', which saw the universities of Harvard and Sassari collaborate with the Nivola Foundation, the CRS4 - Center for Research, Development and Higher Studies in Sardinia, ISTI - CNR - Institute of Information Science and Technologies "Alessandro Faedo" of Pisa, Make in Nuoro - the fab lab of the Nuoro Chamber of Commerce, the Olivetti Archive of Ivrea and the Olivetti Foundation of Rome. "

If the Olivetti relief is the starting point of Nivola's American career, the Combined Police and Fire Facility of 1984 is the point of arrival. As Carl Stein, author of the architectural project and friend of Nivola observes, "the artist, at the end of his career, chose a narrative and anti-monumental approach, recounting the human side of the police force, highlighting their civic responsibility, focusing on episodes of daily presence of the state instead of extolling the absolute values of the institution. "

Between these two chapters of Nivola's New York story, in the early 1960s, there is the Stephen Wise Recreation Area project, a social housing settlement on the Upper West Side for which Nivola executed a large mural graffiti, sculptures, a fountain and a playground with a group of stylized concrete horses. A small herd of these little horses, recreated for the occasion in 1.1 scale by designer Monica Casu, will populate the museum park.

"The horses of Stephen Wise - says director Luca Cheri - are one of Nivola's happiest and most joyful inventions, and after the heated popular protest raised by their threatened destruction in 2021 they have become the symbol of Nivola's art of touch his audience. This is why we would like the reproductions to remain in Orani as a playground for children at the end of the exhibition. "

The exhibition is completed by a selection of paintings and drawings on the New York theme. In addition to intervening in the streets and buildings of New York with his projects - whose connective tissue is reconstructed in a timeline that shows the pervasive presence of the Sardinian artist's work in the Big Apple - Nivola has repeatedly returned to the theme of metropolis in its graphic and pictorial production. The exhibited works capture the chaotic and exciting nature of New York, while at the same time rendering the urgent flow of urban life and the sense of displacement and disorientation that this can produce.

“This exhibition - concludes Antonella Camarda, also curator of the exhibition - is the result of the collaboration between humanists, scientists and companies. It is the same spirit of experimentation and constant innovation that characterized Costantino Nivola's approach and was the distinctive trait of Olivetti. The Ivrea-based company made the combination of art and technology, ancient and modern, a flag in the crucial years of the spread of Made in Italy in the United States ".

(Unioneonline / vl)