"Sky over Nine Columns" - a stunning sculptural composition in the center of Venice

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Prominent German artist and sculptor Heinz Mack presented his new creation at the XIV Architecture Biennale in Venice - a majestic sculptural composition with the poetic title "The sky over nine columns".

Poppy's mind-boggling brainchild is a cluster of nine columns covered with gilded mosaics. The scope is also striking - each column is more than seven meters high. The sculptural group is installed in front of the famous Venetian Cathedral of San Giorgio Maggiore.

It is interesting that the master turned to the column, one of the most ancient architectural elements with a powerful symbolic content. The first columns began to be used in ancient Egypt in the construction of temples. Then these stone pillars were used almost exclusively as a support. The ancient Greeks turned this auxiliary element into a real work of art.

The column has always been a symbol of strength, stability, and in addition, it was the personification of the world axis connecting heaven and earth. The decoration of the columns with gold mosaic elements (more than 800,000 in total) is also hardly an accident. This is a direct appeal to the traditions of local craftsmen who decorated Venetian temples with beautiful mosaics.

Heinz Mack was born in 1931 in the German village of Lorrar. In 1953 he graduated from the State Art Academy in Dusseldorf (Kunstakademie Düsseldorf).

In 1964, Mack formed the Zero group with Otto Piene and Günter Uecker. The new association, which later grew into an international movement, contrasted itself with the then widespread abstract expressionism in Germany. Young artists chose different materials and forms. Zero ideologist Heinz Mack preferred, for example, to work with aluminum, glass and plastic. In addition, he studied space and was widely interested in the properties of light. Mack's associates, Otto Pine and Gunther Uecker, worked with smoke, fire and nails. Today Heinz Mack is a renowned artist, sculptor, director, participant in numerous exhibitions and biennials.

Not far from the place where the Poppy sculptural group is installed, there is one of the symbols of Venice - the sculpture of St. Mark's Leo. For more than 8oo years, a bronze figure of a winged lion crowning a granite column has been decorating the famous Venetian Piazza San Marco.