The casting of the monument "The seven Gottinga of Hanover" (1998) by Floriano Bodini (Gemonio, Varese, 1933 - Milan, 2005) kept the Foundry busy for two years and the artist became a regular in the laboratories. Of special interest was the relationship between Bodini and Pope Paul VI, whose statue, completed in 1986, represented one of the greatest expressive achievements of his art. The artist's death, in 2005, left a void that can only be filled by the personality he has been able to transfer into his work.
During Tangentopoli, the feeling was that "all activities stopped for ten years" but the strength of a foundry is in its artists. Giovanni Bruno, Dario Goldaniga, Paolo delle Monache, Piergiorgio Colombara and also Abdullah Salim, Sergio Alberti and Guido Lodigiani formed a group of young artists who imposed their style in the late nineties, bearing the weight of generational change and the end to the deeply-rooted ideology that emphasised death and its rituals.
This is the world indicated by the Sendai Sundial, a bronze sculpture completed in 1997 at the Foundry by Kengiro Azuma (Yagamata 1926). It is a symbol of time and a bridge between two equally beloved places: the Japanese artist's homeland and Milan, his favourite city. Azuma had first been Marino Marini's assistant, before becoming a great protagonist in his own right of the city's art scene. A year before his death, Alighiero Boetti (1940-1994) crossed the Battaglia threshold to cast a work which represents an existential reflection, Self-Portrait (1993), encapsulating in one ironic instant the awareness of his imminent end.
The current director, Danilo Bosio, joined the Foundry as a wax retoucher in 1988. The nineties marked a difficult time for the Battaglia, which found in the figure of President Matteo Visconti the stability it had long been lacking. The Battaglia Foundry could thus access the new millennium arm in arm with its main protagonists.
The works of Arnaldo Pomodoro found their way into places of spiritual and social influence; in 1990 one of his spheres was positioned in the Pigna courtyard in the Vatican Gardens, and another in 1996 in front of the UN headquarters in New York. Bronze works such as Guido Lodigiani's Baptistery for the Cathedral of Casale Monferrato (2006), which have always been rich with the character only something made of a living material forged by fire can have, became the symbols of pilgrims. Particularly complicated from a technical point of view was the casting of the cross and base of the altar made by Arnaldo Pomodoro for the new church dedicated to Padre Pio, designed by Renzo Piano in 1999. For the 2000 Jubilee it was Floriano Bodini to claim the honours for the Holy Door at St. John Lateran.
Giuseppe Penone, a leading exponent of Arte Povera, and the absolute star of the Venice Biennale of 2007, completed his installation in the Venaria Reale Palace in 2004, while his 28-foot bronze tree in the Tuileries garden in Paris (2000) is characteristic of his search for nature as a protagonist in form and substance.
From 1913 to today, the Battaglia Foundry has kept the bronze casting tradition alive, as ever closely linked to the history of the movers and shakers of the period. The increasingly influential role that art galleries have been playing over the last twenty years, replacing museums as drivers of new trends, has combined successfully with the Foundry and its work. The collaboration with Nicola Loi in the nineties led to the casting of some works of great value, such as the multiple sculptures of Francesco Messina or the works of Piergiorgio Colombara, Paolo Delle Monache, Giovanni Bruno, Giancomo Manzù and Giuliano Vangi. More recently, what has brought the new breath of life of the new millennium to the Foundry has been the friendship with Giancarlo Pedrazzini of "Fabbrica Eos", with Giovanni Sesia, Enzo Fiore, Dario Goldaniga, David Reimondo, Gaetano Fracassio and last but not least Corrado Levi. The history of the Battaglia Foundry is intertwined with that of Milan, it "traces the progress of Italian sculpture in the twentieth century" and shares the vision of its country through the eyes of the Foundry artists, who are "rightful citizens of the great Republic of the Arts "in a place, the Foundry, which is made immune to the passing of time by a constant creative flow.
