GNAM Hosts Baldo Diodato Mid-Career Retrospective

The Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Rome is presenting a retrospective of Baldo Diodato, curated by Achille Bonito Oliva, running until May 29, 2016. The exhibition covers works from 1965 to 2016, highlighting key phases of the Neapolitan artist's career. Diodato, born in Naples in 1938 and now living in Rome, spent over twenty-five years in New York before returning to Italy around twenty years ago. His early mature works from 1966 in Naples featured Pop-inspired pieces with baroque frames incorporating plastic objects. In New York, he shifted toward essential sculpture, creating works like 'Due cubi' (1967), a minimal and processual piece with collapsible cubes. His time in Greenwich Village led to works capturing pedestrian movement, such as a six-by-six-meter canvas installed at J.F.K. Square in Philadelphia. In 1972, he executed a frottage in a Pompeii fountain with Carlo Alfano. Since the mid-1990s in Rome, Diodato has focused on mapping the city's historic center by taking impressions of its cobblestones (sanpietrini) on aluminum panels, a practice he continues. The retrospective is curated by Achille Bonito Oliva, who has known the artist for fifty years. Critic Lea Vergine described Diodato as an 'assembleur of our days,' noting his baroque, decorative, and ironic style.