Anguillara, 1962, dates to the seminal moment in Pepper’s career when she was invited—along with David Smith, Alexander Calder, and nine others—to fabricate works in various Italian factories for Sculture nella città (Sculptures in the City), an outdoor summer exhibition presented in the central Italian town of Spoleto. This was a formative experience for Pepper; in the artist’s own words, “I suddenly was right in the middle of the art world, the sculpture world….And it just changed my life….It was a Ph.D. in metal welding, metalwork.” She learned how to use industrial equipment to these ends and to consider herself the equal of men doing similar work.
The title of this sculpture, which is composed of undulating welded steel ribbons, refers to both the town of Anguillara Sabazio and anguilla, the Italian word for eel. According to Pepper’s daughter, poet Jorie Graham, “Anguillara Sabazia is near Rome on Lake Bracciano, where we went often as a family when I was little. Mom liked to go out in a rowboat onto the lake and draw. She always put [the] name of the place where drawings were made along with [the] date. Often when she picked drawings to make into a sculpture, she kept the place name. Mom disliked eels but was fascinated by them, and we used to joke that we were going to the place of the eels, but she would respond no, we were going to the ‘place of the angles’ because it was known that the original Roman name of the place (Angularia) referred to the coastline taking a right angle turn there. I think the restoring of angolo (angle) to anguilla is one thing that interested her about the name of the place. The sensation of things being multi-layered is really a big part of her work.”