Keywords: Italian art Birolli, Renato Guttuso, Renato Fontana, Lucio Piero Manzoni Bonalumi, Agostino Vedova, Emilio arte povera

Peer Reviewed Title: Italian Art circa 1968: Continuities and Generational Shifts Journal Issue: Carte Italiane, 2(4) Author: Duran, Adrian, Memphis C...
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Peer Reviewed Title: Italian Art circa 1968: Continuities and Generational Shifts Journal Issue: Carte Italiane, 2(4) Author: Duran, Adrian, Memphis College of Art Publication Date: 2008 Permalink: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/2xt8w023 Keywords: Italian art 1900-1999 1968 Birolli, Renato Guttuso, Renato Fontana, Lucio Piero Manzoni Bonalumi, Agostino Vedova, Emilio arte povera Local Identifier: italian_ucla_carteitaliane_11357 Copyright Information: All rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. Contact the author or original publisher for any necessary permissions. eScholarship is not the copyright owner for deposited works. Learn more at http://www.escholarship.org/help_copyright.html#reuse

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Art circa 1968: Continuities and Generational Shifts^

Italian

Adrian R. Diinin

o/Art

Mciìipliis Coìh'iic

Nineteen sixty-eight has long beei) heralded

moment of

the post- World

of Malcolm

tions

war

Wall, the Viitican

X

War

not

tlic,

pivotal

decades. Following the assassina-

first

manned

space

flights,

the

Second

Council and the invasion of technology throughout Europe, was perhaps the most powerful and tectonic paradigm

that single year

of the many that the decade already had witnessed. The student

shift

uprisings in Paris, the assassination Jr.,

it

and both Kennedys, the erection of the Beriin

Vietnam, the

in

II

as a,

of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King,

and the invasion of Prague by Wirsaw Pact troops

what had been had markcd

ali

exacerbated

markedly violent period, quelling the optimism that

a

much of the

decade and setting the tone for the coming

malaise ot the 1970s. Italy,

what

too,

was participant

different nianner.

Its

in these

epochal events, albeit in

students' uprisings

began

a sonie-

slightly earlier

than

those of France; the occupation of the University of Trento took place in the

autumn

ot

l*-'67.

massive strikes in the tions ot

1968 diverted

including the June (2-0)

ot

protests,

with

half of the year. However, the national elec-

much

attention,

and uniquely peculiar events,

European Championship victory overYugoslavia

10'''

and the declaration of the Republic of Rose Island off of the coast

Rimini, made for Artistically,

rain.

These were followed by workers'

first

Over

a

varied experience.

1968 saw

Italy

peering across new, unexplored ter-

the course ot the prcvious few years, a group of exhibitions

who would soon The nomenclature itself was debuted at the September 1967 "Arte povera - Im spazio" exhibition held at Genoa s La throughout the country began introducing those

he

known

as (irte povcni.-

Bertesca gallery, though

its

protagonists held noteworthy shows atTurin's

Sperone gallery and Rome's L'Attico in the years preceding. These were tollowed by exhibitions

in Turin,

CARTE

Bologna, Amalfi, the Castelli

ITALIANE, VOL.

4 (2i)()H)

91

ADRIAN

92

Warehouse

When by

R.

DL'RAN

New York,

in

and

Harald Szcenian's "Live in Your Head:

at

Attitudes Beconie Forni" at the Kunsthalle, f3ern. Chaniftioned

critic

Cìermano Gchnt,

The

represented

arte poi'cm

Italy's tìrst

import since the prewar

ot truly significant International

rapid rise of arte porcni and

its

niovenicnt

era.^

on the

forniidable presente

Inter-

national stage, however, should not give the inipression ofa Minerva-like

gronp springing their footing artists

of an

tully fornied troni the criticai niind ot ( A"lant.

had been cleared by

a

This

earlier generation.

Rather;

nuniber ot groups and individuai not to detract froni the radicai

is

innovations brought about by each of the participants in

arte povera,

but

instead to understand tully the intense and sustained developnient of

is

two and

the ininiediate postwar period.The

a half

the eniergence o( arte povera brought about

opened up the

that, collectively, arte povera in their

own

decades that preceded

a series

of acconiplishnients

of those

availability

tactics utilized

by

breakthroughs, breakthroughs that tinally severed

the bindnigs of Italian art to

High Modernisni.

This paper will return to those decades immediately following Italy's

liberation

and

trace the developnient

of the

visual arts

these years, situating 1968 and the concurrent eniergence a criticai

year

is

pivot in the history of Italian art after World

to be understood as the

moment

in

oi^ arte

War

which the

li.

foci

during

povera as

That

hitetiil

and contexts

of the postwar generation give way to those of their successors, ushering in a

what would beconie

Italian

postmodernism.This

not meant to be

is

comprehensive history of that period. Certain points

for

coherence

as well as to

draw attention

that carry throughout. Neither

history of Italian

art.

The

is

are

emphasized

to signitìcant developnients

this to iiiiply

or impose a telcological

history established in this paper

is

neither linear

nor preordained, but instead an aggregate of singular advances possible the vocabularies

and

strategies

employed by

that niade

arte povera.

Alniost immediately following the cessation of hostilities,

generation of

artists,

a

new

nurtured by the anti-Fascist Resistance, emerged.

Their work was directly responsive to the events of the war, perhaps best illustrated

Renato Birolli

by two portfolios of images taken froni the Resistance:

Birolli's Italia

'44 and

and Guttuso were

Renato Guttuso's Gott

affiliated

which had been targeted by Mussolini they,

himself.^ In

revitalization

Both

Corrente,

Roman compa-

The agenda ofthe Fronte ofthe Italian avant-garde, which was

launched the Fronte Nuovo

Nuovo was the

uiis.

October of 1946,

along with nine of their Milanese, Venetian and

triots,

iiiit

with the Milanese group

delle Arti. ^

CARTE ITALIANE,

lOL.

4 (2008)

accomplished with some nieasurable success, following exhibition

9.Ì

inaugurai

its

the Galleria della Spiga in Milan in June of 1947 and the

at

iy48Venice Biennale. If the Fronte Xtioi'o

be

its

heterogeneity.

can he characterized by any single

The post-Cubisni of

Birolli

trait, it

would

and Guttuso, Vedova

and Pizzinato's Futurist-inflected dynamics, Turcato's non-objective

and Leoncillo's angular ceramics were

abstractions, into the

group

s

project, along with the

welcomed

ali

works of painters Antonio

Corpora, Giuseppe Santomaso, and Ennio Morlotti and sculptors Pericle Fazzini

and Alberto Viani. This multiplicity of idiom was due,

m

generation being the

part, to this

first

exposed

of prewar Modernism through events such

as

to the full breadth

the Galleria Nazionale

d'Arte Moderna's 1946 Pittura Francese d'olmi and the retrospective cxhibitions at the 1948 Biennale and reports brought back by

and

critics

artists

abroad.Their coming together was bound to an anti-Facist,

pro-Modernist rejuvenation, that contoured by

a single

unifying

an ideological grouping, not one

is,

style.

This heterogeneity, however, proved to be the group's undoing. In

November

1948, on the occasion of the Prima mostra uazioìiaìe d'Arte con-

temporanea in Bologna, Palmiro Togliatti, head of the Partito Italiano,

members ofthe PCI Gordion knot

abandon what he

to

called "cose

ol

agenda-dnven

understandings of what

art

logie,

Gold War

politics,

to the

PCI and painted with an

niade to choose one over the other. abstraction,

1950. What

itself into a

and personal

should be and do. The niost immediate

was the dissolution ofthe Fronte iVhoìv. Those

membership

ali artist

mostruose" and

Almost immediately, the discourse formed

"scarabocchi."''

effect

Communista

launched an attack against abstraction, calling for

who

both held

abstract vocabulary

were

Some chose the PCI, others chose a memory by the early months of

and the Fronte Xiiovo was is

remarkably dissonant about the entire circumstance

is

the

divcrgence of cnticism trom practice. Togliatti's prescriptions and the discourse they engendered situated realism and abstraction as antitheses, rcflective vs.

ofthe larger binaries ofthe time, both Gold War (Communists

Christian Democrats, East

garde

vs. kitsch,

The work produced by ditìerent set ot critcria. ries,

vs.

representation

West,

vs.

etc.)

and High Modernist (avant-

abstraction, etc).

the Fronte Nuovo, however, belies an entirely

Realism and abstraction

are

permeable catego-

intermingled quantities that shuttle and oscillate within each work.

None

ot thcir

works can be categorized

as strictly

one or the other.

ADRIAN R.DURAN

94

Rather than an either/or construction, the late-1940s production of the nicnibers of the Fronte Nuovo denionstrates

a different paradigiii, that

of

both/ncither, wherein those classifications by which the discourse seeks to quantify the

works

are rendered insufticient

and needlessly antago-

nistic.This probleniatizing of

taxonomies was the great achievenient of

the Fronte Nitoi'O and, though

it

Fronte

artist

group Forma published

"We

Italy,

it

offered a

Nuovo was not the only group struggHng

the Hniitations of pohtical and

Roman

ultiniately unsustainable within the

new open-

and vocabukiries.

ness to artistic niethods

The

was

of early Gold War

artistic-poHtical context

its

deckre ourselves to be

categories. In

FORMALISTS and MARXISTS.

especially

now

elements in our society must hold

AND AVANTGARDE Their platform was buik on

a

the

manifesto, proclaiming,

convinced that the ternis Marxisni and forniahsni

IRRECONCILABLE,

to overconie

March of 1947,

are not

that the progressive

REVOLUTIONARY

a

position."'

reaction against the historicism and

empty

expressionism of the Novecento group, quite reasonable to expect of a generation that had been excluded by the Fascist

of whom had participated in Resistance

artistic

apparatus,

many

activities.

Their desire to reconcile what had been considered irreconcilable reflects the larger efìorts of this generation to dissolve hierarchies

and categories, and multiplicity lyrical,

their

work,

like that

reflects a

are

Ugo Attardi's, which are upon landscapes. Antonio Sanfilippo's is a much less reter-

with reminiscences of objectivity,

often based

of the Fronte Nuoi'o,

of means. Carla Accardi's abstractions of the late-1940s

ential abstraction, built

and Giulio Turcato,

as are

with patchcs ot color of varying formai

who

was

also exhibiting

rigor,

with the Fronte Nuovo, had

achieved the greatest distance from rcpresentation. Forine}, like

the Fronte Nuovo,

would

also fracture

by decade's end.

Theirs, however, was an internai dissolution, with mdividual artistic

agendas diverging and personal matters

America, Achille

Perilli's

member Goncetto Maugeri abrupt,

artificial,

— Piero Dorazio's

military service,

leavnig for

and the death of sometime

— intervening.

and extcrnally induced than

It

was significantly

that

of

less

the Fronte Nuovo.

Nonetheless, and despite the differences of location, aesthetics, and politicai agendas,

both ofthese groups had

a forceful

impact on

Italian

CARTE ITALIASE.

art iniinediately after isolatioii

of the

Fascist

World War

II,

nioving

I

OL. 4 12008)

95

beyond the torpor

it

aiid

period and laying the groundwork for the devel-

opments of the following decades.

Suovo

C".oncurrent with the Fronte

delle

Arti and Forma, Lucio

Fontana's SpatiaHsni appeared as another iinportant trajectory in the

dcvelopnient ot Italian postwar

both the concerns and

tactics

art,

one

broadened

that significantly

of this period. Already by 1948, Fontana

was calling for an elaboration of painting and scuipture beyond their forniulas

and boundaries.*^This notion had led bini to enibrace

evidenced

tion,

in bis Aiìibicnte spaziale a luce nera at

Naviglio and bis later

Milano, 1951, and the bis practice

work of

XXXI

Milan

the early-1950s at the

Fiera di Milano,

s

installa-

Galleria del

IX Triennale

di

1953.These vvorks nioved

beyond the painted piane into neon tubing and punctured of

ceiling panels, the antecedents

Noteworthy

as

some of the

these also niaintained

bis

widely

known

earliest installation

two points of focus

that

work

and

ta_{^li.

postwar

Italy,

bucclii

in

would prove

lasting

and

durable into later decades: an embracing of industriai and inechanical

technology and integrity

of the

a persistent art object.

questioning of the necessity of the structural

Holes,

shafts,

and the

illusory solidity

becanie Fontana's niaterials, entering into the discourse

of light

a radically

de-

centered notion of the materiality and behavior of painting.

The

Spatialist project was, at

its

inost successful, a prescient break

from

By decades end, Fontana was joined by own breaking through the boundaries of

the normative practices of painting. others,

the

ali

ot

whom enacted their

medium. Consistent among

these was a turn to the sculptural,

whether

through an actual mampulation of the painted supporr, or through

a

hybridizarion ot painting with an external process or material. Perhaps best

known among

these are Piero

Manzoni s Achromes. The

clear differences

with Fontana's practice notwithstanding, Manzoni similarly modulates painting towards "the material heterogeneity rendered inert in modernist painting.'" Simultaneously, others, including

Agostino Bonalumi'' and

Emilio Vedova" were breaking into three-dimensionality^

Of some

importance

in considering this quartet

ditferences of age. Fontana

Though born ists

that

of artists

are their

earlier generation.

twent\' years apart (1899 and 1919, respectively) both art-

carne to their earliest maturity in the years immediately after

War and

and Vedova are of an

II. 1

Manzoni and Bonalumi were

significantly

World

younger (born 1933

935) and their emergence retiects an overlapping of generations

would move

Italian art

away from the primary

thrusts

of late-1940s

ADRI.W

96

R.

DURAN

and early-1950s into the more open and aggressively experiniental late-1950s and early-iy60.This transition as

it

is

of fundaniental iniportance

synthesized the innovations of the earher period, aniplifying their

proniinence, and incubating the idcals and strategies that would prove centrai to arie povera

and the generation of 1968.

Bonaluniis work

at

the end of the 195f)s ni not entuely unlike

Manzoni's. Canvases are punctured by

wood and

cenient, as

it

growing

out froni within the weave of the canvas.They are alternately organic and othenvorldly, dry and viscous, tactile in attraction and optical in revulsion, like

Manzoni s saggnig

kaolin and ossified breads or Burri's burnt plastics

Agt)stino Bonalunii "IMu"

ì'^)(ì7.

C'iallena

Nazionale d'Arte Moderna,

Rome.

CARTE ITALIANE.

and

were followed,

distressed sacks.These

by nionochronie canvases with regular grid patterns

slight,

I

OL. 4

in the first years

97

(2l)l)S)

of the 1960s,

bulbous protuberances, organized

in

and others with rhythniic undulations and pinches

one of flirniture upholstery. Bonalunii's constructions main-

that reniind

tain the sovereignty

of the hanging, rectilinear support, but

their sculptural

beyond

skeletons and rolling, bulging surfaces exist in a dialogue

painting,

dose to the sculptural but adequately described by neither. Siniilar.

both ni developnient and

Vedova. A tangential

date, are the

o( Conente and

affiliate

Fronte S'uovo delle Arti, Vedovd.

had been

at

a

the center of the Togliatti-

induced chaos of the late-40s, ultiniately choosing over that of the party, enierging

as

Nono on

Luigi

1961

his

own

result

his career

undenvent

a substantive

ofa collaboration with composer

the opera Intolleranza 1960.^- Preniiered International Festival ol Conteinporary

at that year's

direction

one of Italy's foreniost practitioners

o( inforniel.At the dawn of the 1960s

change of direction, largely the

works of Emilio

founding meniber of the

on Aprii

13,

Music spon-

sored by the Biennale di Venezia, Intolleranza I960 pronipted Vedova 's explorations of the intersection of physical space and the painted

first

scenography tor Nono's

surface. His

Intolleranza

i960 included mobile

spheres, suspended geometrie screens, portable screens carried actors,

manipulated is

by the

and tracked platforms onto which Vedova projected painted and slides

and

tilms.

Newly

present in this scenographic

work

the inclusion of direct references to contemporary Europe, derived

froni

Angelo Ripellino's

libretto.'^

This integration ot pointed text references also infiltrated Vedova 's

contemporaneous temporary tragedy

War

E3erlin.

bound

Reliefi,



which marry

Franco's Spam, the

Most importantly, the

to the limitations

of the

a slashing

Kennedy

Reliefs

brushwork with conassassination.

and Gold

of the early-1960s, though

stili

Hat, quadrilateral support, niark Vedova 's

break into three-diniensional construction.

The advancements and and the

Reliefs

reached their

Berliner Tai^ebncli,

executed

during Vedova 's tenure

and Art, the

maturity in the creation of the Absunies

in Berlin

as artist in

between 1963 and 1965. Created

residence at the Senate for Science

Absiirdes Berliner Ta{iebucli

constructions called plurimi slashed,

tievelopments evident in Intolleranza i960 full

is

a suite

(Italian: multiples).

of three-dimensional

Constructed of broken,

and charred pieces of wood, bolted and lashed together with

ropc and wire salvaged from the

embankments of the

and around Karl-Marx-StraBc, the plurimi

are

Spree, Spandau,

opened up on the

floor.

ADRIAN R. DL'RAK

98

^t

f

^

^

Emilio Vedova "AlìMiidcb Bcilincr laiichiuli"

l'J()3-()0. Ikilinisclic ('.alene,

Berlin.

propped against

and suspendcd iìom the

walls,

cciling.

invited to inanipulate the plurimi, enacting the inultiphcity

Viewers froiii

are

which

they take their nanie. Their surtaces are eticrusted with paint, pierced,

and plastered with collaged print media, and often interspersed with recognizable glyphs.They carry the scars of war itude and discontinuity of like the city, consists

itself.

The



the

niilitaristic

no longer whole, but not

reniains

perhaps not an intuitive pairing. Vedova

Modernisni. eral

Fn-st,

own

both

a rickety

s

production during

who

vvas siniulta-

radicai departures froni the liniitations

left

support in favor of



entirely destroyed.

these years bears a certain kinship to that of Manzoni

neously enacting his

a

behind the Hniitations of the

fiat,

ot

Vedova plurimi or moving 's

are significantly difterent uses

quadrilat-

their

hinged wings into

new

a

rooni

positions

of the body than Manzoni's transformative

signing of the Viewer into sculpture or the placing of oneself Base. Nonetheless,

of High

mobile, dimensionai practice that embraced

both temporahty and the body of the viewer. Ducking through full

decrep-

Absiinics Bcrliiicr Ta^^cbucU,

ofan accuniulation ofhattered

groLiping ot structures

Though

Bedin

on A%/V

each of these intcractions engagcs corporeality

more immediately than had

far

thus far been attempted in Italian postwar

CARTE ITALIANE,

OL. 4

99

l2lll)8)

nioving the focus beyond an interrogation ofthe material existence

art,

of the work into

a

nieditation

variabiHty in both tinte its

I

on the

work of art, its

situationahty ofthe

and space and the

conipletion or finahty.This niobiUty ot

of the viewing body in

role

medium,

forni and existence

would prove one ofthe cornerstones of later endeavors.

The

fugitive, ironically,

may have been

the most consistent variable

Manzoni's career, and was most evident in

in

a set

his later

works, which ofFer

of breakthroughs centrai to the developments in

196()s.

Foremost amongst the

object itself

Broken

fugitive in

art

of the

Manzoni's production

later

the

is

marker washed off ofthe body, and deflated

eggs,

ali speak to the insistence upon degradation The work is often organic or, at times, takes on the behaviors ofan organism. Bound to this is the centrality oftemporality. Each work exists as such tor a tinite period of time and, though

balloons ofthe

embedded

a

artist's

breath

in these works.

certain residue remains, each will inevitably dissipate. Furthermore,

Manzoni's works

ali

prompt

a

questioning ofthe credibility ofthe

particularly in relation to the accessibility

existence ofthe work.

It is

his

given and perceived credibility that trans-

forms eggs and bodies into works of

powers to do the

sanie,

art,

imbues

Moreover,

it

is

authenticity, a

wooden

a

base with

and allows the whole ofthe Earth to be absorbed

upon

single sculptural object placed unwittingly

as a

artist,

of any evidence ofthe physical

this credibility

concept which

—and

itself

its

own

base.

the attached certificate declaring

becomes remarkably

slippery



that

convinces the viewer that the length of line contained within a canister is

as

described and that

tiiis

of feces are wortli

tlieir

dcbt to Duchaiiip notwithstandiiig, Manzoni's revolutionary practice to that point,

dcath in

1

if

not

weiglit in gold. The

may have been

at ali, in

96 1 abbreviated what may have been

a

postwar

the most

His

Italy.

long career, but

his

breakthroughs, along with those of his contemporaries, opened the terrain for the navigations that

The beginnings

oi^ arte

would emerge with

tectonic shift in the landscape of Italian art

iute povera.

povera in the middle/late- 1960s niarked a art.

The

niap of Itahan postwar

was reoriented, with Turin and Genoa rising in importance and

Rome

being reinforced

not unprecedented

as a

center of indisputable importance. Though

— one could quickly

cite F.T. Marinetti's role in

Futurism or Lionello Venturi's actions with

emergence of Germano Celant discursive voice,

removed

as

its

//

Gruppo

dcj^li

Otto



critic-advocate signaled a

in location, ideals,

the

new

and age from the previous

generation ot critics that had dominated Italian art

silice

the war. Critics

ADRIAS R.DURAN

100

and

CLirators

such

as

Venturi, Rodolfo Pallucchini, Giuseppe Marchiori,

Marco Valsecchi, and Mario De Micheli, who werc for the rejuvenation

of the

Italian art

world

largely responsible

demisc of Fascisni,

after the

were rendered somewhat of an old guard, concerned with politics

for a Guerrilla War"'"* adopted the language anti-Capitalist, anti-impenalist

group with the

movements focus

issues

and

ofa previous moment. Celant's 1967 essay "Arte Povera: Notes

that

of the

day,

Marxism

were coalescing throughout Europe.

honding the

ot the student

He

claimed

a

on contingency, events, ahistoricisni, the prcsent... an antliropological outlook, 'real

discarding

ali

Given the climate of 968, 1

nouncements

the

as

man". .and .

visually univocal

is

it

diminish

its

of

artists, this

entirely

moment new and

certainly

would

ditferent.

however, to reassert the developments ot the previous

criticai,

when

a certainty

dawning ofa new consciousness.And, when paired

appear to be the onset of something It is

hope (novv

not unnatural for one to see these pro-

with the Works of these young

decades

tlic

and coherent discoursc...'^

assessing the novelty ot arte povera.

innovations,

which were

By no means

is

this to

substantive in light ot these sanie

previous decades, but instead to recalibrate our understandmg ot what these final years of the 1960s

one Comes

meant within

to understand the totality

recognize the incubation of

many of

a larger

Pascali's fictive

in

armaments

ali

unavoidable to

arte povera

its

tactics in earlier

it

pronounced politicism of Luciano Fabbro s suspended Michelangelo Pistoletto s painted

temporal span.As

of

protests,

is

projects.The

Italian peninsulae,

Mario Merz's

igloos,

and Pino

engagé the global politicai circumstance

ways similar to Vedova 's, Nono's, and those of an entire generation

weaned on

the anti-Fascist sentinìents of the Resistance. Furthermore,

the actual or potential changeability of Ciiovanni Anselmo's sculptures,

which

eat salad, absorb

atmosphenc moisture, and

struggle against the

energies of torsion, and the works of Pier Paolo Calzolari, Gilberto

Zorio, and Jannis Kounellis,

ali

of which harness and activate chemical

and physical phenomena, bear some debt organic

work

at

to

Manzoni's fugitive and

the beginning of the decade. Installation, a favored tactic

of Kounellis and

Pistoletto, also has

its

roots in earlier work, particularly

during the moments in which the viewer becomes an activator ot or participant in the work.

.

CARTE ITALIANE,

0{ coLirse,

one cannot

rowed and adapted the

own

their is

particular

sufficient to

siniply bor-

difference of ideologica! circumstance

this possibility.

World War

maturation of these

Vietnam and the mach opened

in

of 1968

of their predecessors, shuttling theni into

tactics

explode

101

4 (2t)(»i)

honiogenize the circumstances and

that the generation

moment. The

doniinant in the politicai

war

siniply

one begets the other,

daini that

VOL.

had ceased to be

II

artists,

giving

social discourses

way

to the

of the period.

The

late-1960s were an intellectual landscape dominated by the

ideas

of Eco, Lippard, and the Frankfurt School,

Methodologically,

found

this brief, albeit

itself positioned as

postmodernism emcrged

which

monumentai, moment of 1968

in Italian art. This

historical periods are

upon which new foundations

the history ot art, are rarely is

certainly a credible

is

is

it

has emerged, but also

at a

is

often lost

is

the

and

way

one another, depositing

sedi-

are laid. Departures, particularly in

sudden and unforeseen. Their identification

backward looking

often retrospective, and this

new

which

not marked by explicit beginnings and

endings, but rather fade into and out ot nient

new

from those

the point of departure from

demonstrable argument. As such, however, what in

apart

and Marshall Pian Europe.

ofTogliatti

has always

much

how

that

which

is

reveals not only

one point

at

fullv

what

formed

previous point embryonic and developmental.With this awareness,

does US well to consider 1968

which

its

as

the previous decades

Italian art of

seeds finally blossom

is

moment at which moment at

not simply the

overtaken, but also the

and begin to germinate.

Notes The

1

discussions,

scholars

ideas in this paper are the result

of

nuniber of conversations,

a

and collaboratioiis with niany exciting and wonderfully supportive

and

colleagiies.

Foremost aniong these

are

Ann

Angela Dalle V^icche, Carol Nigro, Jennifer Hirsh, Lindsay Pilat.

Their expertise has been of great benefit to 2.

this

Gibson, Lara Pucci,

Fiarris.

and Stephanie

work.

Clurrendy, the niost accessible and thorough resource on

Carolyn Chnstov-Bakargiev,

ed.. Arre povera.

London: Phaidon

iiitc

poi'cni

is

Press Lunited,

iy9y. 3.

By

tional scale.

the l^SOs. Italian art liad attained

The Museuni of Modem

Italian Art" did niuch to expose

Art's

some

notice on an interna-

1949 exhibition "Twentieth Century

American audiences

to Italian

Modernisni,

as

ADRIAN

102

RDIRAN

did C'athcnno Viviano

New York

gallcry in

s

City. Lionello

Otto also

Somaini, «Otto

Pittori Itaìiaiii»

SantonuisOyTiiraito,

I

952- 1954:

ì

Afro, Bi rolli, Corpora, Morali, Moriotti,

Milan; Padiglione d'Arte C'onteniporanea,

aloidi

Realisin: Corrente di

l

Ret'ieu'VlU, no. 1-2 (1990): 139-()4);

Opere

dalla collezione Stellatelli,

1930-1990

Manna

Fascist Italy:The Bottai Years,

is

La Fenice, 1960): 150, quoted and translated in

and contemporary, recounting ofpostwar

The

5.

best sources

Arti: Nascita di

November

Fronte

Dissent in

on the group

1

1/6/1940-3/1/1942 (Florence:

Bettinelli,

122-23. For an overview,

are

Sauvage [Arturo

Milan: Schwarz Editore, 1957.

Giuseppe Marchiori, s.r.l.,

197H),

//

Fronte

//

f-'ronte

Nuoìv

Nuovo

delle

una avanj^uardia (Vicenza: Basilica Palladiana, 13 September-16

Nuoro

Tlic Mai>aziiie

Nuovo

oltre:

recounted in Edoardo and Duilio

Giorgio Tacchini Editore,

1997), and Sauvage.

vvith the h'roiite

"The Art of

Italian art, see Tristan

pseud.], Pittura italiana del dopoi^nerra

delle Arti (Vercelli:

{Stdiiford

Pizziolo. ed.. Corrente e

Bettinelli,

Benito Mussolini, voi. M),

di

of

1936-43" (Ph.D. diss.,The Courtauld Instante of

Art, 2000). Mussolini's interest in Corrente

Susmel, Opera Omnia

Politics

(Palazzo della Permanente, Milan,16

Octoher-15 November 1998); and Giorgia

Nuovo"

19S().

and theYouth (Ailture of the 193Us,"

Giovanile

Ita

Itidiaii

dc{>li

groiip, see Luisa

Por Information on (Aprente, scc Ruth Ben-Cìhiat, "The

4.

Shwarz,

Ventuns Gruppo

held shows throughout Europe. Por inforination on the

itself. is

o/Art

delle Arti:

A

useful introduction in English,

Ingebord Eichmann,"Letter from

42A

(January 1949): 6S-71.

My

contemporary

Italy:

the

f-ronte

owii dissertation,"//

Ahstraction and Realism in Italian Painting

at

the

Dawn

of the Coki War, 1944-50" (University of Delaware, 2006), seeks to revise and

expand the historiography of this movement.

Roderigo

6.

di Castiglia

[Palmiro Togliatti, pseud.]. "Segnalazioni."

Rinascita: Rassei^na di politca e cultura italianaVA

The

7.

manifesto was signed by Carla Accardi, Dorazio,

A

Mino

1

Guerrini, Achille

Perilli,

Ugo

avanguardie" 32). Parma:

Cjalleria

from

beli jar."

1947.

The

Antonio Sanfilippo, and Giulio Turcato. in

FORMA

I

("Attraverso

"Second Manifesto of Spazialismo," Fontana and

In the 1948

its

1948): 424.

Rome, March

come out from

its

fraine

the

and the sculp-

Lucio Fontana, "Second manifesto of Spazialismo,"

'Fhe Italian Metaniorpliosis,

le

d'Arte Niccoli, 1994.

other signers called for "the painting to ture

1,

Attardi, Pietro Consagra, Piero

sohd introduction to the group can be found

8.

(November

manifesto was published in Forma

in

1943-1968. Ed. Germano Celant. NewYork:Tlie

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1994. 713. 9.

insightful

The

phrasing

is

taken from Jaleh Mansoor,

and lucid reading of Manzoni

Organicize Disintegration," Octoher

')5

in

who

otTers a

ber "Piero Manzoni:

(Winter 2001): 28-53.

remarkably

"We Want

to

CARTE ITALIANE,

10.

Boiìdliiiiii: cì'ohi^ioiic coiilimiiì

ti\i

pittuia e

Massimo Barbero. Parma:

guardie" 38). Ed. Luca

VOL.

iiiiibictitc

Uhi

4 (2008)

("Attraverso

avan-

le

Galleria d'arte Niccoli, 2000.

3S. 1

Ed. Ida

1.

Perhaps the most comprehensive publication on Vedova

Cìianelli.

12.

This

Museo

is

Emilio

I

aiovo.

d'Arte Contemporanea, Castello di Rivoli, 19*)S.

penod of Vedova

's

production has been tracked, most recently,

by Ursula Prinz. See ber essay "Por ever contemporaryiTo the space composition

of the

Absiiidcs Berli iiciTii{icbti(ii

by Emilio Vedova" and the others

l'cilovd. Absiirdcs: BcrlincrTa^ebuch '64.

Die Schetikunq

Berlin: Berlinische Galerie, 2002. See also

Painting"in BdiDijneTendeiìcies

in

iUi

my "Baroque

in Eiiiilio

die Berliiiisclie Galcric.

Space

in Postvvar Italian

CoHtcìnpomiyAit. Ed. Kelly Wacker. Cambridge

Scholars Press, 200S. 13.

These included references

to anti-Fascist demonstrations in Italy,

the Algerian revolution, the Spanish Civil War, the

Kennedy, and

a

recent tloodmg of Italy 's Po river

"Two-thuds of liberation" and "Spain,

liìtollerdiizd

I960." In

Lni