Sculpture

I'm working at the restoration of a sculpture by the French artist
Cisar, owned by Museo Civico, Milan, under Mrs. Marina Pugliese's
direction.

It's a work belonging to the series of the so called "Expansions",
carried out during the seventies, made by polyurethane foam and
covered by a fiberglass and resin layer, on which has been spread a
coloured enamel. The sculpture I'm dealing with ("Expansion n.10,
1970") is covered by a white enamel, probably an alkyd base enamel,
under which there is a layer of acrylic paint..

The damages are represented by many remarkable cracks, affecting
both the enamel and the underlaying layer, and by a lot of enamel
losses. There are also many detached areas of both layers.

This work has been already restored some years ago: many big losses
were filled with a sort of resin for coachbuilder and the whole
sculpture was repainted with a nitrocellulose enamel (that has been
now completely removed).

I should be really grateful if someone could give me some
information about possible other cases of restoration of such works,
and any other information about the nature of the constituent
materials or about their possible damages.

Antonio Rava


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 15:50
                 Distributed: Monday, January 14, 2002
                       Message Id: cdl-15-50-008
                                  ***