Claudio and Enio grew up around their father's workshop and learned the craft of sculpture while they submerged themselves into an environment soaking in artistic culture.
Claudio Girola, Alfredo Hlito, Tomás Maldonado, Edgar Bayley, Gyula Kosice, Rod Rothfuss, Arde Quin and others got together at Rubí bar, in front of Miserere Square.
Given Enio's young age, he is first a spectator, but quickly became an active member of the Concrete-Invention group, giving birth to his first painting over a linoleum sheet that same year.
It seems that the sculpture Torn Circles is opposing to the theoretical bases of the Constructivism and, as the titles announces, it foreshadows one trait of his work: to sever from models that begin to suffocate his desire to explore new horizons.
Maldonado, Hlito, Iommi, Sarah Grilo, Fernandez Muro, Ocampo, Aebi and Claudio Girola staged collective shows in Viau and Krayd galleries.
In 1953, Enio Iommi met Susana Schneider, a young polyglot Argentine woman of French-Swiss descent, to whom he married three years later and who played a decisive role in the development of his career as an artist.
In this period, he initiated collaboration with the Austrian architect Herman Loos, for whom he designed decorative items –an activity that enabled him to secure his livelihood whereas he continued to produce his personal work, which took a new direction.
This period, that the art critic López Anaya refers as “Baroque” stretched out for 25 years, during which Enio Iommi asserted his identity as a Modern sculptor.
In addition, the eye-catching sculptures he had been collecting until then didn't fit in the political context imposed by the coup d’état of the previous year.
The Julia Lublin gallery housed the exhibition “Farewell to an Era”, whose most prominent work: Acrylic Rectangle and Trash Presented as a Glossy Surface that Conceals a Chaotic Inside was a hint of the forthcoming decades.
Stones, sheet metal, marble and wooden crates appeared stitched in an unconventional way and affected by the passage of time.
His pieces The Stone Guest and His Little Dog (1984) and Our Daily Bread is Getting Harder Everyday (1987) carried on the same leitmotiv referring to the historical phase.
The ‘x’ symbolized the crossroads and meeting places between young artists born in the 60s who came from different backgrounds: Ana Gallardo, Pablo Siquier, Ernesto Ballesteros, Jorge Macchi, Carolina Antoniadis, Marita Causa, Danilo Danziger, Andrea Racciatti, Gladis Néstor, Enrique Jezik, Gustavo Figueroa, Juan Papparella and the filmmaker Martin Pels.
The series consisted on kitchen utensils such as coffee pots, kettles or pans that were disintegrated by means of cutting them, bringing forth new spatial forms.
On My Utopies vs the Reality, the last show at the end of the century, Iommi affirmed his criticism about the excess of industrialization and the consumerism typical of the modern lifestyle.
All of them alternated with major retrospective exhibitions: the anthology exposition entitled “Iommi”at the Cronopios room in the Recoleta Cultural Center, where 43 sculptures produced between 1945 and 2000 were displayed.
The last retrospective show called “The Edge of Space 1945-2010” presented by himself is hosted by Recoleta Cultural Center in 2010 and spanned his entire work.
Soda pop bottles, drug boxes, sushi sticks and items that created a new and different series from his previous works when combined together.
Consulted bibliography: Official internet site http://www.enioiommi.com Until 1999: López Anaya, Jorge, Enio Iommi, Sculptor (Gaglianone, Buenos Aires: 2000).