Obituary: Arnaldo Pomodoro Was a Sculptor of Monumental Fractured Spheres

Arnaldo Pomodoro, a post-war Italian artist whose monumental spheres—highly polished but jarringly fractured—populate public squares around the world, died at his home in Milan on June 22. He was 98.

- Nina Siegal

ROME – Arnaldo Pomodoro, a post-war Italian artist whose monumental spheres—highly polished but jarringly fractured—populate public squares around the world, died at his home in Milan on June 22. He was 98.

His death, coming the day before his 99th birthday, was announced by his niece Carlotta Montebello, who is director-general of Pomodoro’s foundation in Milan.

A self-taught artist who trained as an engineer and goldsmith, Pomodoro was best known for his imposing bronze spherical sculptures, which stand—among many other locations—outside the United Nations headquarters in New York; inside Vatican City; and on the campus of Trinity College Dublin.

His other major public works include Entrance To The Labyrinth, an enormous maze adorned with cuneiform sculptural formations in Milan; a controversial fiberglass crucifix that hangs in the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and Disco, a giant bronze disc, also in Milan, where he spent much of his life.

Dr. Glenn Lowry, director of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, said in an e-mail in 2021: “Pomodoro was one of a number of important European artists to emerge from the aftermath of World War II, whose work dealt with the effects of a world destabilized by nuclear arms, economic hardships, and the trauma of the Holocaust.”