LUCIANO FABRO

An art historian chronicles the career of a celebrated sculptor.

Two decades ago, Italian sculptor Fabro (1936-2007) asked curator Rowell if she “would edit an anthology in English of his lectures and writings.” Rowell agreed to participate but felt it would have been better “to write an illustrated book that prioritized his sculpture, at the same time shedding light on the thinking behind it.” Before the project got going, Fabro died. To honor his achievement, Rowell has produced this volume, in which she draws from the many interviews Fabro granted to her and others to “clarify the mysterious beauties and infinite complexities of Fabro’s art.” In this amply illustrated coffee-table book, Rowell charts Fabro’s career, from formative influences such as the writings of Locke and Rousseau to his two-year 1960s “moment” as an adherent of Arte Povera, characterized by “a drive to oppose the currents of consumerism and industrialization.” Subsequent decades included a period in which he incorporated Wittgenstein’s definition of tautology into works involving “commonplace things that engage the senses directly”; his series of Piedi (Feet) 1968-73, “among his best-known sculptures, singled out for their unclassifiable grotesquery” and intended “to reinvent the traditional premises of sculpture by attacking its own conventions”; and later experiments such as “hanging stone sculptures in the air, setting them on a pitched diagonal suggesting imminent fall, or even sliding down stairways, accentuating a precariousness and the loss of sculpture’s generic stability.” Rowell, a passionate guide, provides relatively little analysis but describes Fabro’s works and influences in considerable detail. She writes that Fabro’s work demonstrated “a range of diversity and complexity rarely seen in a single artist.” Readers of this handsome volume will understand why.

An excellent introduction to a 20th-century sculptor who deserves to be better known.