UCLA, home to a world-class treasure trove of sculpture, is about to install a piece by contemporary Italian sculptor Eliseo Mattiacci.

Early in the morning of Monday, May 23, a hydraulic crane will lift the one-ton abstract piece onto a subterranean concrete pad on the north side of Royce Hall.

Over the course of the day, 10 to 12 laborers will bolt into place "L'Occhio de Cielo" (Heaven's Eye), a single band of 17-inch wide corten steel wound in a 7-foot-2-inch lyrical coil that balances lightly on its side as though it could easily be rolled with the slightest push.

A formal unveiling will follow Thursday, May 26, at a 4 p.m. ceremony to be attended by university dignitaries, project donors, officials from the Italian government and the artist himself.

In addition to being positioned next to a major entrance to UCLA's Royce Hall, the piece will be visible from UCLA's Italian Department, which is a base of scholarship on the sculptor.

"We are very excited to be getting this sculpture, and we believe that its location at the north entrance of Royce Hall couldn't be more appropriate," said Massimo Ciavolella, Italian department chair. "Royce Hall is not only the symbol of the University and home to the Italian department, but it was modeled on a famous Romanesque landmark in Milan -- the Church of Sant'Ambrogio. Important historic landmarks often serve as the backdrop for Mattiacci's sculpture in Italy.

"Mattiacci is one of the front players in the cultural movement that from the 1960s radically altered the face of Western art," Ciavolella said. "His work reflects Italian culture at its best: it's enduring, monumental, profound and delightful."

On the same occasion, a wall sculpture by the 65-year-old sculptor will be unveiled in the Italian department. And at 6 p.m., a display of the preparatory drawings behind "Heaven's Eye" will open at the Italian Cultural Institute in Westwood.

Although Mattiacci's sculpture was exhibited at a New York gallery in the 1970s, and he has permanent installations in Italy, Germany, Japan and Switzerland, the UCLA piece represents his first permanent installation in the United States.

The piece is a gift from the artist, who was impressed with UCLA's sculpture garden during a visit to Los Angeles. UCLA alumnus Francesco Mancini and, his partner, Paula Gibb, helped pay for the installation. Both are co-founders of the Century City networking and Internet company, Intelligence Research Group. Additional costs were borne by the Cultural Office of the Italian Ministry of External Affairs and the Italian Cultural Institute of Los Angeles. No state or university funds were used.

"I am very proud that my first permanent installation in the USA is at UCLA, which has one of the great modern and contemporary collections of sculpture in the United States or anywhere," Mattiacci said. "I'm also proud that my sculpture will join those of three other great Italian modernist artists -- Burri, Consagra, and Somaini."

"Heaven's Eye," which resembles a bull's eye or huge, compressed spring, is in keeping with the artist's love of forms with cosmic or astronomical references, said Luigi Ballerini, UCLA professor of Italian and author of "Mattiacci: Il carro solare del Montefeltro 1986-2003" (Mazzotta, 2004).

"Mattiacci is known for creating improbably ethereal sculpture using coarse industrial materials and processes," said Ballerini, a longtime personal friend of the artist. "Seeming to defy gravity, his works often deal with such idealized or mythical states of perfection and power as the state of equilibrium or chariots of fire."

Mattiacci's work is inspired by "the mystery of cosmic gravity," Ballerini said.

About his own work, Mattiacci has said, "I would like my work to bring forth processes that range from iron age to the conquest of space."

One of Italy's leading contemporary artists, Mattiacci burst on the scene in the 1960s with pieces created from scrap and discarded industrial materials. The succeeding decades pulled him in several directions, but his work continues to display a fascination with weight, gravity and magnetic forces.

It has been exhibited by commercial galleries in Athens, Paris, New York, Frankfurt, Turin, Milan, Verona and his adopted hometown of Pesaro, Italy. Mattiacci also has been exhibited widely by public institutions, including the Venice Biennale (1972 and 1988), the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples (1991), the Fondazione Prada in Milan (1993), the Centro per le Arti Viive in Pesaro (1996), the Palazzo Ducale in Urbino (1999) and Trajan's Market at the entrance to Rome’s historic Forum (2001).

Sculpture featured in the Forum exhibit included "La mia idea del cosmo" (My Idea of the Cosmos), a 2001 piece that covered the floor with lead balls, two large spheres and a hemisphere of aluminum; "Equilibri" (Equilibria), a 2001 piece consisting of five ample metal discs that stand on their thin edges thanks to magnetized anchors; and "Campo magnetico" (Magnetic Field), a 1991 piece consisting of a long blade of iron suspended via a magnet in the ceiling over an large iron circle.

"The idea of the cosmic landscape -- with the cosmos evoked by geometric figures such as the sphere and the circle, perfect in their seeming recapitulation of all possible directions and dimensions -- is a recurrent motif in Mattiacci's recent work," wrote ArtForum magazine in 2001. "Exhibited in an ancient space, these large metal forms ended up sharing with the Roman brick and marble an idea of ancientness that transcends real time and even the physicality and weight of the work's constituent elements."

Other recent examples of works in the same "spatial-cosmic-astronomical" style as "Heaven's Eye" include "Equilibrio compresso" (Compressed Balance), a section of a railroad track leaning on a metal sphere, installed permanently in 1995 on a peak high above the famous Tuscan hill town of San Gimignano; "Dove circolano le idee" (Where Ideas Circulate), a metal disk leaning on the ground at an 80 percent angle and pierced by two beams, installed permanently in 1995 in Tokyo's Hakone Open Air Museum; and "Il carro solare del Montefeltro" (Sun Chariot of Montefeltro), a 1986 abstracted chariot resting on stylized rails in a permanent installation on a pier adjacent to Castello di Miramare, one of Trieste's major landmarks.

Mattiacci is preparing a permanent monument for the northern Italian municipality of Reggio Emilia. Other artists participating in the project include Luciano Fabro, Sol LeWitt, Robert Morris and Richard Serra. The piece will be installed in June.

In addition to creating his own work, Mattiacci presides over the Centro per la Scultura Contemporanea (Center for Contemporary Sculpture), an art gallery that he founded in 1987 to display his own work and to promote the works of younger sculptors. The center occupies a Renaissance landmark in the center of the central Italian town of Cagli, Mattiacci's hometown.

Mattiacci's drawings will be on display through Aug. 30 at the Italian Cultural Institute, 1023 Hilgard Ave.

"Orizzontale 2/7" (Horizontal 2/7), which hangs in the entrance of the Italian department, is a four-foot long wall sculpture. Seeming to float in front of the wall, the sculpture consists of two iron beams balancing on a larger iron beam. Three steel balls balance on top of the smaller beams.

Mattiacci's two pieces are joining a world-class collection of sculpture, including masterpieces by Rodin, Matisse, Archipenko and Arp. Thanks largely to the stewardship of UCLA's third chancellor, Franklin D. Murphy, the university is renowned for its modern and contemporary sculpture.

Beginning with the dedication of the Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden in 1967, UCLA has gained a reputation for housing one of the most distinguished outdoor sculpture collections in the country. In addition to the five-acre garden in UCLA's North Campus that features more than 70 pieces of sculpture, the university is home to substantial art -- and sculpture collections -- both within the Anderson School of Business, the David Geffen School of Medicine and UCLA Medical Center, as well as elsewhere on the campus' northern portion.

Other pieces of sculpture by Italian artists at UCLA include Alberto Burri's "Grande Cretto Nero," 1976–77; Pietro Consagra's "Difficult Dialogue," 1959; and Francesco Somaini's "Vertical-Absalom," 1959.

The sculpture dedications are part of UCLA's Year of the Arts, a 12-month celebration of UCLA's position as the University of California's flagship campus for the arts and as a national center for artistic research, public arts presentation and the training of young artists, scholars and teachers. It also marks the dedication of two world-class arts facilities on the UCLA campus: newly renovated Glorya Kaufman Hall opening in Fall 2005, featuring state-of-the-art facilities for dance, videography and cross-cultural investigation in the arts; and the Edythe L. and Eli Broad Center, which will provide expanded studio spaces, updated classrooms, and galleries for student exhibitions and public programs. The Broad Center, opening in Spring 2006, will include exceptional visual arts exhibitions and the unveiling of a torqued ellipse sculpture by Richard Serra.

UCLA's Italian Department, which offers courses in the linguistic, literary and cultural experience of Italy, is celebrating its 70th anniversary. One of the oldest, largest and most comprehensive Italian departments in the United States, it was founded in 1935 and offers degrees at the bachelor, master and doctoral levels.