Exposition "Tensione", Carlo Ramous

Carlo Ramous was born in Milan in 1926. He attended the Liceo Artistico of the Accademia di Belle Arti in Bologna, then continued his studies at the Accademia di Brera with Marino Marini and Giacomo Manzù where, in 1946, he exhibited his first anthropomorphic works freely inspired by Boccioni, Fontana and Melotti. He quickly established himself on the Italian scene of abstract sculpture.
In his works, dynamic tension and plastic presence coexist; the geometric spatiality is partially exalted and contradicted by a skilful interplay of balances capable of challenging the heaviness and rigidity of the materials used, such as wood and metal. Over the years, his sculptures gradually become more airy, ideograms or three-dimensional signs that find their rightful place in urban contexts.
In the 1980s, Ramous developed his research through numerous series of models, made of zinc sheet, real studies for great achievements. These are small structured elements where the plastic form dissolves into its spatial negative, for a new oscillation of the overall image. Ramous died in Milan in 2003.
Personal exhibitions have been organized in the largest museums and galleries: the Galleria Il Milione (1956) in Milan, the Galerie Jolas (1971) in Geneva, the Piazzetta Reale (1974) in Milan, the Anthological Exhibition at the Centro Allende ( 1977) in La Spezia. His sculptures also appear in major international exhibitions such as the Venice Biennale in 1958, 1962, 1972; the San Paolo Biennial of Brazil in 1961; the Rome Quadrennial in 1955, 1959, 1973; the Milan Triennale in 1954, 1960, 1964; the Antwerp International Biennale in 1965 and 1973 and other internationally renowned exhibitions from Paris to Tokyo, from Rome to London, from Oslo to Milan, from New York to Los Angeles.
His works are part of the collections of important museums including the Villa Giulia Museum of Modern Art in Rome, the Cà Pesaro Museum of Modern Art in Venice, the Galleria d'Arte Moderna in Milan, the Colgate Museum in New York, the Middelheim Museum in Antwerp, the Forma Viva Museum in Portoroz. In parallel with group exhibitions, he has created numerous public works: the Cino del Duca Printing House in Blois (France) and in Milan the Church of Santa Marcellina, the Church of Don and the sculpture in front of the School of Viale Marche . Among the installations that have left an indelible mark in urban contexts, we can cite in Milan “Finestra nel cielo” (1968) on Piazza Miani, “Gesto per la Libertà” (1972) on Piazza della Conciliazione and the “Monumento ai Caduti dell' Isola” (1972) in Segrino Square, as well as the monumental “Ad Astra” (1992), a stainless steel complex almost 12 meters high, weighing 7 tons, installed in Chiba's Chou Park City, Japan. A few years ago, Ramous' works were exhibited several times in the center of the ski resort of Cortina d'Ampezzo in Italy. This public art intervention in Megève can therefore ideally represent a link between Megève and Cortina d'Ampezzo. The two stations have indeed experienced similar development.
“Tensione” is a work representative of the season of Ramous' full artistic maturity: in fact, the sculptures produced from 1969 onwards seem to gradually shed the informal sensitivity typical of the early 1960s, to become the plastic achievement of a sculptural ideal.
In this series of works executed in rolled and welded iron and impregnated with
futuristic reminiscences, the alchemical relationship between the monumental vocation
of a work created to relate to urban spaces and the artist's desire to free sculpture from the weight of matter, to make it a free gesture in the air, seems to be consummated.