The last work by Luciano Fabro

The Pillar of Genk by Luciano Fabro (1936 Turin – Milan 2007) is a homage to the miners in this Belgian city, many of whom were of Italian origin. The 7-metre-high statue was commissioned by the City Council of Genk (B) and will be erected in the city centre in October/November 2007. In order to give the inhabitants of Genk some idea of the context of the statue, Fabro asked the Bonnefantenmuseum to hold an avant-première for the statue, placing it in relation to the statues in the museum’s collection. The Pillar of Genk will therefore be exhibited in one of the inner gardens of the museum from the end of June.

The Pillar of Genk is made up of two parts of a marble pillar, with a block of black volcanic pumice squeezed between them. The pillar is topped by a capital, on which the following text is chiselled: For centuries, a people surrounded themselves with beauty, formed by light, proportions and harmony. Until a generation was made slave to its own brothers and thrown into the dark hell. The two are now formlessly united here to continue the initial path. The meaning is easily understood. It is also one of the few statues intended for the public domain. His respect for his public was always manifest, especially where it concerned such an honourable place as a market square in the city centre.

Fabro’s good intentions towards the inhabitants of Genk have now been cruelly interrupted. A week before the statue was erected in Maastricht, he passed away suddenly. He leaves us with the double meanings linking his demise to The Pillar of Genk, as the statue symbolises also death in general, even on a personal level . The black block of basalt is suspended between two parts of the pillar of life – his own life. Nothing stands in the way of this interpretation now he is no longer with us. The context of the statues in the museum makes this interpretation even more credible. The Birth of Venus stands for birth in its most aesthetic form. Prometeo stands for the total destruction of earthly existence, through the agency of the god of fire, who has completely lost control over this fire. The idea for the statue was conceived shortly after the accident in the nuclear power station in Chernobyl in 1986.

Venus and Prometeo stand for the beginning and end of the life cycle. These works in the collection, too, are typically characteristic of Fabro’s work. On the one hand, you can regard him as a conceptual artist, who appears to be devoted to ideas rather than execution. None of these works were hewn, polished or chiselled by his own hand. On the other hand, he is concerned with the highest level of craftsmanship in the many disciplines in which he engages. Whether it is marble, glass, bronze or other materials, he always takes the ultimate potential of the material as his starting point.

Luciano Fabro
The Pillar of Genk