Materdei Metro Station

Contemporary public art

Spalletti and LeWitt return to their splendour.

Within the framework of the Three-Year Agreement between Friends of Naples, ANM and the Comune di Napoli for the safeguarding, conservation and enhancement of the contemporary public art heritage of the Materdei station on Line 1 of the Metro of the Comune di Napoli, an important milestone has been reached, financed entirely by the donations of the members of Friends of Naples: the completion of the restoration of Ettore Spalletti’s work “Colonna persa” and of “Splotch, Non geometric form #8” by Sol LeWitt.

The latter sculpture belongs to the series of works that LeWitt created from 1999 to 2005 with the sculpture fabricator Yoshitsugu Nakama, who translated the artist’s two-dimensional, hand-drawn designs – which LeWitt called “footprints” – into three-dimensional forms.

The work Splotch #8 was covered by a thick carbonaceous deposit caused by constant exposure to the fine dust generated by the circulation of the trains, combined with the air currents created as the carriages pass. The three fragile, lightweight bodies of which it is composed were dismantled and cleaned in situ by the students of the Accademia di Belle Arti di Napoli, under the scientific coordination of Prof. Giovanna Cassese; small lifted flakes of colour were made to re-adhere to the structure and integrated in matching tone in the missing areas.

Thanks go also to the patrons Gianfranco D’Amato and Alfonso Artiaco, who financed a new protective case for the structure, designed by Lucio Turchetta.

Spalletti’s work, Colonna persa, is composed of an inverted truncated cone and a parallelepiped in black Belgian marble, a brass star with gilded leaf, a backdrop and a shaped tile in white Corian.

Like the previous work, it is constantly exposed to the presence of fine dust, which carries carbonaceous particles onto its elements, triggering an acceleration of decay; it is also exposed to the continual passage of travellers and therefore to acts of vandalism. The marble elements, dirty and dulled, together with the stained, yellowed and scratched backdrop, were cleaned and protected with a light layer of microcrystalline wax, and finally polished with wool cloths, which restored to the marble elements their original brilliance.

The association’s activity continues, as set out in the agreement, through routine maintenance interventions on the appurtenances and exits of the Materdei station, with the involvement of other associations and of the residents of the neighbourhood, and through fundraising campaigns aimed at financially supporting the restorations of the other works in the station, signed by the most prestigious contemporary artists.