Eliseo Mattiacci
b. 1940, Italy
d. 2019
Eliseo Mattiacci is considered one of the greatest Italian sculptors of his generation. Over the past five decades, Mattiacci has used sculpture to question, examine and explore the mysteries of the cosmos and mankind's relationship with the universe. He began his career in the early 1960s when he moved to Rome after completing his studies at the Istituto di Belle Arti in Pesaro and receiving an award from the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Rome. In Rome he encountered artists from key movements at the time, such as Arte Povera and Minimalism, although he maintained a fiercely independent and unique trajectory, rejecting any label that sought to categorise or position his work within a particular school of thought.
Mattiacci represented Italy twice at the Venice Biennale (1972 and 1988), and his work featured in numerous exhibitions worldwide, including most recently 'GONG', a monumental presentation of 20 outdoor sculptures at Forte di Belvedere in Florence, Italy in 2018, with a major retrospective at MART in Rovereto, Italy in 2016. He was awarded first prize at the 1995 Fujisankei Hokone Open Air Museum Biennial in Tokyo and the Feltrinelli Sculpture Award of the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome in 2008.