The egg in Piero della Francesca's altarpiece holds a particular fascination for Ingo Maurer. The egg is a perfect, self-enclosed shape: a primeval form, a universal symbol. This object was specially devised for the space at the Fondazione, which immediately gave Maurer the idea of creating a very large egg - to convey a sense of his own relationship to Piero and thus to Italy itself. The problem was that the egg had to be flawed: a perfectly formed, conventionally beautiful egg would have been inappropriate. So Maurer began to experiment with broken eggshells, investigating the formal tensions that arise from cracking and fragmentation. The surface of the object consists of crushed eggshells. The installation also includes two large wall mirrors that reproduce the image into infinity. Visual surprise, even astonishment, is always a key element in Ingo Maurer's work. Aluminium, eggshells, acrylic 180 x 130 cm Text from the exhibition catalogue, which is available at our Munich showroom.