In this room are displayed several works that point to multiple read- ings of Nel momento (In the Moment), such as Nel momento, 1974 (2000), made of lead, Nel momento, 1974 (2016), made of lead and copper and Tazza nel momento (Cup in the Moment), 1995 (2004), composed of forty elements made of lead, tin, iron, copper, silver and gold.

Here there is also the early work, L’osservatore si sposta oss- ervandosi (The Observer Moves, Observing Himself), 1982, consisting of an iron tripod with a gold element placed on top. The presence of the gold element in L’osservatore si sposta osservan- dosi, a sort of curl set on the platform where the camera is normally mounted, helps to intensify the sculpture attributing to it a certain regality. The gold spurs the viewer toward the alchemical dimen- sion in which this metal represents the power of transmutation of things with a view to the attainment of an ideal perfection.

L’osservatore si sposta osservandosi would later be given an even more explicit title: L’osservatore non l’oggetto osservato (The Observer not the Object Observed). Several examples of this work are on view in this room. It was to become a sort of recur- rent topos in Salvadori’s artistic production over the years, invit- ing us to focus our attention on ourselves, as well as on the work. A change in perspective with which the artist distanced himself from the prescriptive character typical of the maximalism of the 1960s and “opened up” to different ways of doing art, through which posi- tivity of existence and inner harmony were brought into accord with the living and with the world and its substance.

The verb “to observe,” used in the title of these works, provides the sense and the raison d’être of its form and opens it up to a range of meanings that can be drawn on in order to fully comprehend the philosophical aspect that underpins it: “The element of observation has been fundamental to the construction of the object” (Salvadori). In the exhibition the individual works are grouped so as to form an assemblage that is observed and at the same time is observing what goes on around it. In this way a sort of short-circuit is created between the observer and the observed.

Corridor

In the passageway between one room and the next are hung two watercolors on paper entitled Ecce Homo, 1985, which anticipate a work with the same title, but executed on copper and located in the following room: Ecce Homo, 1985 (2009).

One of the two versions on paper has three lines in the mid- dle–one pink, one red and one green–that intersect and suggest an anthropomorphic shape. In the second drawing the figure emerg- es in the white of the paper from the yellow color that surrounds it. The genealogy of this type of form, as the artist has often pointed out, can be traced back to a trip to Dornach, made with his friend the pho- tographer Jean-Pierre Maurer to visit Rudolf Steiner’s Goetheanum. Steiner is a figure who has meant and continues to mean a great deal for him: “The reference in Ecce Homo is not to the historical episode but rather to the universality of the word used for it. I am tempted to say ‘the human of moment to moment.’”