Giò Pomodoro (17 November 1930 – 21 December 2002) was an Italian sculptor, printmaker, and stage designer. His brother is the sculptor Arnaldo Pomodoro.
Giò Pomodoro, along with his brother Arnaldo, learned the techniques of goldsmithing from jewelers in Florence, Italy in the 1950s.
In 1954 he moved to Milan, where he associated with leading avant-garde artists and started making jewelry. He then began to produce reverse reliefs in clay and also formed assemblages of various materials, including wood, textiles, and plaster subsequently cast in metal.
Curator Paola Stroppiana explains: “Every item of jewelry englobes a great ability for design, the sign, intellectually expressed in designs of rare beauty, and the ornament, the result of copious archives full of references on classical culture and the ritual-metaphysical dimension. Moreover, Pomodoro knew how to maintain a close bond with his sculptural work, transposing into his jewelry, and vice versa, the results of his research, from Tensioni and Folle to Gusci, from Contatti to Soli”.
During the 1960s, he developed several series of sculptures, which explored a range of abstract shapes, usually with smooth undulating surfaces. Later in his career, Pomodoro received public commissions and produced several large outdoor structures.
Gio Pomodoro’s achievements in Contemporary Sculpture were from the International Sculpture Center 2002. In 2002 the artist was honored with an untitled work in the Simpósio Internacional de Esculturas do Brasil, in Brusque, Santa Catarina, Brazil.
The Italian artist spent his entire life in search of beauty, creating jewelry and monumental works. The sign and the ornament as meanings in Gio Pomodoro move from figurative to Informal jewelry.
The geometric shapes as mechanical elements can be seen in colored enamels to figurative forms.
When a Gio Pomodoro jewel is worn, we must-have present this artist transforming wearable ornaments into expressive artistic jewelry.
The rebel goldsmith, engraver, sculptor, and set designer, Giò Pomodoro (1930-2002) once said, “Beauty causes pain when it is taken away from us”. It’s true. Furthermore, we think that when you create something beautiful and maybe it’s not understood in the times that you live it’s painful as well.
Gio Pomodoro’s work is very special it’s not based on the richness of the materials, it’s based on the vision and the inspiration of the designer. When I see Giò Pomodoro’s work, without any doubt takes me to modern and contemporary art specifically geometric and abstract art. This man was a genius, being able to transmit in his jewelry these kinds of feelings and references. Sometimes people tell me that my articles and reviews are very creative and that in IA we have a creative mind, and I feel so grateful for the comments because I try that IA brings closer the art of jewelry to the audience.
But when I see artists like Giò Pomodoro, I just feel so humble, because one thing is being a creative person but definitely another thing is being an artist; owning the capacity to transform wearable ornaments into expressive artistic jewelry…that’s something!
