Stele n.2

Umberto Mastroianni, uncle of famous actor Marcello, took part in the partisan
movement with the extraordinary commitment that also informs his works,
which champion the demands conceived in that concrete struggle for freedom and
caused Giulio Carlo Argan to hail him as a “poet of the Resistance”. Particular importance attaches in this sense to the production of monuments to those fallen in
war, to the Resistance and to peace in steel or bronze, where the inspiring concept
gushes forth from the composition of the volumes or the energy of their movement.
Working between the poles of the geometric post-Cubism and the expressionistic
Art Informel, he chose the path of abstraction. Matter came to life, fermented
and underwent transformation in his hands.
The two bronzes, mounted on pedestalframes, exemplify the period of the artist’s
maturity. Working the surfaces and applying colour, he focused primarily here on
a space-surface dimension with explosions of energy conveyed through the alternation of solid and void, light and shadow. (Transl. by Paul Metcalfe per Scriptum, Roma)