WORDS AND PERFORMANCE

Paolo Scheggi, "6profetiper6geometrie"(6profetsfor6geometries), 1971, gold (cube), black marble (pyramid), white marble (sphere), silver (parallelepiped), pietra serena (cone), bronze (cylinder). Wooden bases covered in shiny black "Print", with steel lapidary characters, support structures in shiny chromium-plated steel, total dimensions: 130 x 50 x 30 cm approx. Private collection.

The geometric solids are monuments dedicated to six prophets. Each prophet-solid is associated with a quotation from the beginning of the prophet's own book, written in lapidary characters on the base.

“He was to go ahead with keen determination to the point of reducing the work, wholly consumed by its actual presence, to a pure concept. We did not know that his life was under threat and that he was well aware of it. He chose art, not only to experience intensely the short time he had left, but to complete with great lucidity the inevitable experience of death. It is perhaps for this that one of his last and most thoughtful works is a geometrically formed tomb, a symbol of the extreme contradiction between theoretical immortality and the inevitable historical death of ideas”.

Giulio Carlo Argan, 1976