The Spheres of the 1960s were all characterized by an imagery of pure form sundered, violated, and partially eaten away by internal erosion. Beneath the flawlessly polished or natural skins of the exterior surfaces, multiple motifs of recessed and repeated dentils, ribs, and hatching became for the artist “an expression of an interior movement.” While an artist in residence at Stanford University, Pomodoro evolved the first of his new spheres, the Rotani or Rotors, of which the Putnam Memorial Collection has one of the earliest examples. The distinction between the Spheres and the Rotors lies simply in the stability of one and the potential mobility of the other. Thus, Princeton’s.
