Verde alga

Despite its large scale, the sculpture is compact, peremptory, authoritative with the sacral nature of a totem pole or an ancient stela. It is bi-frontal, the chromatic element of the material perfectly wedded to the play of forms in elongated strips. The rhythm that animates the sculpture is reminiscent of the flow of water, rising and falling over an uneven surface. The carving distributes the forms over several overlapping planes, while the shadow that etches and outlines them impresses upon us the thickness of the stone. The design is an archetype that Consagra repeated in a number of formats, materials and variants.
“At first”, he said in an interview in 1973, “I did totemic sculptures, which then gradually became frontal. I tried to free the sculpture from the frontal physical constriction by broadening the concept of frontality to other expressions. Frontality is like a pane of glass where all occurrences arrive and stick. Every arrival is defined in the same way. All phenomena are equal”. Umberto Eco observes with his customary lucidity that “the work of Consagra is like a challenge to him, because the poetics of frontality seems like the violent imposition of one possible preferential moment, in some cases the outright elimination of the space around the work”.