Paolo Tommasi passed away in JIPMER on July 16th due to the COVID-19 virus. He had just turned 92 years.
Paolo was born in Ancona, Italy in 1928. The war and his father’s deportation and death in the Mauthausen concentration camp left an indelible mark on his reserved and reflective nature and influenced his future development. Moving to Rome, he received a degree in architecture and cultivated his passion for theatre and painting. In 1952 he joined the Compagnia dell’Opera dei Burrattini, founded by Maria Signorelli, with whom he went on various tours throughout Europe, receiving acclaim for his original stagings of the “game of life.” In 1957 he began working with Giulio Coltellacci, a set and costume designer already successful for his stagings of theatre and opera. In 1958 he had his first exhibition in Paris, consisting of dreamlike visions of cities and cathedrals that, the following year, he exhibited at Galleria L’Obelisco in Rome. Exhibitions followed in New York, Tokyo and other European capitals.
In 1963 he travelled through the Nazi concentration camps in Europe with Holocaust historian Miriam Novitch, resulting in a profound existential crisis that he was able to process only through his encounter with India and Jungian psychoanalysis. In 1966 he arrived in Pondicherry where, in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, he came into contact with The Mother and felt he had found what he had been seeking.
In 1968 he participated in the foundation ceremony of Auroville. He made the designs for the exhibition under the Banyan tree for Auroville’s Inauguration Ceremony on 28th February, which, after receiving The Mother’s blessings, were given to Nata (Alberto Grassi) who, with his team, executed the works.
On 29 December 1969, Satprem spoke to The Mother of Paulo’s idea to build a centre in Auroville. This conversation has been recorded in Mother’s Agenda. Satprem:
He [Paulo] says that for a few years, energies in Auroville have been scattered: they are egoistic, everyone wants to build his own little hut, his own little story, or, at best, hopes to build a supercity, which will only be an improvement on all the existing cities of the world. In this Auroville, an axis, a center is missing. What’s missing is … a unification of the consciousnesses around a center, an axis. So he said that in the past, they built pyramids, they built cathedrals, and around those symbolic constructions, consciousnesses could unify and rise and purify themselves. Well, what should be built in Auroville is an axis, a center, a symbolic temple of the new world we want to create, and all the consciousnesses should unite in the construction of this pyramid of the new world, or this temple of the new world – which will at the same time help to bring down what must express itself there.
Mother approved of the idea, saying “It’s very good, that was the first idea: there was the center, and the city was organized around it… As for me, I’ve known it for a long time. It’s there (gesture above) waiting [to come down].”
Paulo further elaborated this idea in a letter to The Mother, recorded in Mother’s Agenda of January 10, 1970:
Very sweet Mother,
I saw Roger Anger on Sunday, he came to my room and. we had lunch together. With love I arranged beautiful flowers for You and Roger. You were with us. We spoke a lot. I felt Roger like a brother.
I told him that Auroville cannot be born like any other city (urban, social, economic problems, all of them to be seen later). The starting point must be “something else.” That is why we must start with the Center. That Center must be our lever, our fixed point, the thing we can lean on to try and leap to the other side – because it’s only from the other side that we can begin to understand what Auroville should be. And that Center must be a form manifesting in Matter the content that You can transmit to us on every plane (occult included). As for us, we should only be the open and sincere means through which you can concretise that.
Then I told him how I felt the need for all of us to approach all this while living the experience inwardly and unitedly – people from the East and the West – in a vast movement of love, because it is the only “concrete” possible for building “something else”….
... And that Center can give us that love right now, because it’s the love of You!
I told him that, on the practical level, we could begin with a moment of silence, gathered together, try to make a complete blank, and in that blank, with everyone’s aspiration, bring down the signs for the beginning. But all of us united and together, especially the more spiritually advanced – the Indians. R. agreed entirely. He said we should really do that.
Paulo returned to Italy, visiting Pondicherry and Auroville regularly. He continued his work on set and costume design, working alongside numerous internationally renowned directors. With his exhibition at Galleria L’Obelisco in 1975, he inaugurated a series of paintings identified with what came to be seen as his symbol image, a sort of mandala that evokes silence and infinity. The monograph Architetture di Paolo Tommasi (1979) illustrates some of his most avant-garde projects for the conception of space, the environment and furnishings. His forms, simple and essential in the purity of their golden proportions, have received numerous accolades, including the “Design Source Spec Neocon Awards USA” (1983; 1984). Acclaim for the innovative theatricality of his installations also earned him the “Premio Armando Curcio per il Teatro” in 1985.
In 1987 Paulo made a proposal for the outer skin of the Matrimandir in line with his concern that it be of the utmost simplicity and purity. At that time, the space-frame (consisting of hundreds of pre-cast concrete beams joined in nodes cast in situ) was almost complete and a decision had to be made on how to cover it with a beautiful and weather-proof outer skin. In October 1987, in a marathon meeting, the Aurovilians present were asked to vote for either Roger Anger’s proposal with golden discs, or Paolo Tommasi’s proposal to cover the space-frame with large triangles of white marble. Roger’s proposal was accepted.
Over the next years, Paulo continued to advise Roger on aesthetic matters on Matrimandir issues, such as the relationship of the 70cm diameter crystal globe and its cube stand, which consists of four gilded symbols of Sri Aurobindo.
From 2000-2002, at the request of Roger, Paolo made detailed concept paintings for each of the twelve Matrimandir gardens. Roger however discarded this proposal as he felt his brief for the gardens had not been followed.
Since 2010 Paolo has been living in Pondicherry for periods of increasing duration. “In no other place do I feel my soul reawaken and do I achieve that inner work that gives meaning to my life: becoming more aware of myself and the mystery that surrounds us.” From time to time he would visit his friends in Auroville and Matrimandir. In his Pondicherry house, he would continue painting his often strikingly expressive images, and these were published in the book ‘Immagini sull’Invisibile’ – ‘Images on the Invisible’ and exhibited in Savitri Bhavan in 2016.
Paulo’s remains were cremated in JIPMER’s crematorium on July 17. Due to COVID-19 restrictions only four people were allowed, one of them was from Matrimandir, Auroville.
A 5-minute clip on Paolo, Piero and Gloria visiting the Matrimandir in 2009 can be found at .
A longer interview with him in his final years can be viewed at: . The publication ‘Paolo Tommasi. In Search of Harmony’ published in 2015, traces his artistic trajectory in constant evolution.
