Exibition "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; geometric spatiality is partially exalted and contradicted by a clever play 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 aerial, ideograms or three-dimensional signs that find their rightful place in urban contexts.
In the years 1980, Ramous elaborates his research through numerous series of series of models, realized in sheet of zinc, real studies for big
realizations. These are small structured elements where the plastic form dissolves in its spatial negative, for a new oscillation of the global image. Ramous died in Milan in 2003.
Personal exhibitions were organized in the most important museums and galleries Galleria Il Milione (1956) in Milan, the Jolas Gallery (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 Biennale in Brazil in 1961; the Rome Quadrennial in 1955, 1959, 1973; the Milan Triennial in 1954, 1960, 1964; the Antwerp International Biennale in 1965 and 1973 and other internationally renowned exhibitions from Paris to Tokyo, Rome to London, Oslo to Milan, New York to Los Angeles.
His works are part of the collection of important museums including the Museum of Modern Art Villa Giulia in Rome, the Museum of Modern Art Cà Pesaro in Venice, the Galleria d'Arte Moderna in Milan, the Colgate Museum in New York, the Middelheim Museum in Antwerp, the Museum Forma Viva in Portoroz. In parallel to the collective exhibitions, he has realized 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 mention in Milan "Finestra nel cielo" (1968) in Piazza Miani, "Gesto per la Libertà" (1972) in Piazza della Conciliazione and the "Monumento ai Caduti dell' Isola" (1972) in Piazza Segrino, as well as the monumental "Ad Astra" (1992), a stainless steel complex almost 12 meters high, weighing 7 tons, installed in Chou Park in Chiba 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 Megeve can therefore ideally represent a link between Megeve and Cortina d'Ampezzo. The two resorts have indeed experienced a similar development.
"Tensione" is a work representative of the season of Ramous' full artistic maturity: indeed, the sculptures made from 1969 onwards seem to gradually shed the informal sensibility typical of the early 1960s, to become the plastic realization of a sculptural ideal.
In this series of works executed in laminated and welded iron and impregnated with
reminiscent of futurism, the alchemical relationship between the monumental
of a work created to relate to urban spaces and the desire of the artist to liberate the sculpture from the weight of the material, to make a free gesture in the air, seems to be consummated.