La scultura di Vito Pancella

Sulla punta dei piedi n.2, 1999; bronze, 40x16x13 cm

Consider Italo Calvino and his masterful "American Lessons", which is steeped in the theme of lightness. All Vito Pancella's work as a sculptor has relied on that divine theme. In contrast to the general weightiness of matter, in particular, of bronze, his work brings to life the concrete image of liberation in a leap that is like the prelude to an airborne dance step. The figure of the girl is the essence of lightness: her body stretches out, forming a screen to the wind as it billows her dress, transform ing the diaphanous fabric into an impalpable wing spreading in the air. The mass of her hair lightens, coming loose in the air "we feel" passing through it, transforming it into another wing. Pancella exerts the full power of the basic principles of his art: beauty of form, a rigorous flexibility and the extraordinary suppleness of matter embodied in the representation of an unwavering dream of absolute freedom.

"Vito Pancella's metamorphic sculpture is bound to light and darkness and to the ardency of form, while also melting and vanishing into a mysterious space that seems almost incommunicable with our own. Its relationship to the very essence of nature and biology, not only animal and vegetable, but also atmospheric, lunar and stellar, lies in the grafting together of the mental picture and the sculptural figure in both internalized and extroverted senses. From such tension and primeval emotion develops a germinative power from which arises the Silhouette, more solid and recognisable, its form condensing out of the air ambiant."