The Struttura n. 11, made by Franco Cannilla in 1964 and exhibited at the tenth anniversary of the Premio Termoli the following year, is one of the first works to manifest the artist’s adhesion to Gestaltic and Neo-Constructivists tendencies. This definition, theorized by Giulio Carlo Argan (13th International Congress of Rimini), was published in some articles on “Il Messaggero” from August 1963 setting it apart from international Optical and Kinetic tendencies of 1959/60. While the general catalogue of Cannilla’s works is still in progress, there is only one recorded numbering of the works (which is integral to the title), redacted by the artist and Giorgio Tempesti in the monography he published and curated for Cannilla’s solo room in the 1966 Venice Biennale. From this progressive numbering and other critical evaluations, we gather that there wasn’t a total adherenceto the Gestalt, but a coherent evolution of the artist’s research, analysed by Tempesti and already matured in Ideogrammi Spaziali (1958), Itinerario Spaziale 5 (1958) and 8 (1959): works exhibited thanks to Carlo Cardazzo at Galleria Selecta (Rome, 1959, catalogue edited by Emilio Villa) and after at the Galleria del Cavallino (Venice, 1961, catalogue edited by Giovanni Carandente), who consider Cannilla a forerunner of these tendencies (Filiberto Menna, “Franco Cannilla”, exhibition, Caltagirone, 1981). A journey that can be considered concluded in Itinerario Spaziale 9 (1959) and in Struttura nello Spazio n. 2 that is currently missing (probably originally part of Cardazzo’s collection), and exhibited by the gallerist in the Book Pavilion at the 1962 Venice Biennale. But if Cannilla’s initial theme was for the sculpture to integrate the space/environment in the work, originated from a reflection by Martini on the object problem, from which Ancient sculpture is foreign (A. Martini, Scultura, lingua morta), it has already evolved towards new directions in the 1958 works examined by Tempesti, where the profile of the figure becomes a “drawing in space”, and as drawing, a project. Then it is transferred in space through laminated metal or perspex bent into circles, then into rectilinear and orthogonal shapes like in Struttura n. 11, that become object, or rather the hypothesis of an object as pure visual phenomenon.

We could say that the object (sculpture) isn’t really an object anymore, but an “almost object”, a phenomenon that is firstly a perceptive process.

The objects that Cannilla made with mirroring materials and transparent plastic, that are the products of industrial technology, don’t lend themselves to physical and psychological use: they are intact and intangible to perception and, when the eye sees them, the perception is no more a sensorial trauma and yet it becomes an intellectual act. These objects measure the space and select the light. (reworking of G. Cannilla’s text, director of the Franco Cannilla archive).

Franco Cannilla was born in Caltagirone in 1911. Since the Fifties he researched a classical proportional harmony in the making of “Concrete Art” objects, also in relation to new industrial materials. After attending the art school in Palermo and for two years the Accademia di Belle Arti in Palermo, in 1940 he moved to Rome. Here he showed his works for the first time in a trade union’s exhibition. After a few years he directed his works to abstraction. In 1943 he takes part to the 4th Quadriennale, the first of the postwar period. in 1950 Cannilla presented an exhibition at the Galleria dello Zodiaco in Rome, and in the same year at the 25th Venice Biennale.

After a pause in his art, he started to work mainly with bronze.
From the beginning of the Sixties, he favoured solutions of a constructivist nature, and of perspective solicitation, related to his researches on Kinetic nature. He shifted his use of materials, adopting also those of industrial production: steel, perspex and so on. He presented an exhibition at the 33rd Venice Biennale in 1966 with Kinetic and Constructivist works. The same year he won the Premio Termoli with Struttura n. 11 and subsequently was included in the collection of the Premio Termoli.
At the beginning of the Seventies, he started making large structures that could be placed outdoors; then he ventured into the study of graphics and abstract photography.
He died in Rome in 1984.