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