Italy Arts Part 5

In its new quantitative extension, almost programmed in an ambiguous leveling, monochord seems instead the most conspicuous spirit of the moment, inclined to favor formulas that, when properly managed, can obtain a widespread consensus that is certainly not incentive but pathological as it is subject to the most negative mechanisms and outcomes of mass communication, of which the ” artistic ” product would be only one among the many goods at the service of the market that has become an important factor and direct client. Moreover, the market itself cannot be demonized in a moralistic refusal nor abandoned to the ideological arbitrariness of occasional subjects. It must be totally restructured, if ever possible, and channeled, through a critical problematicism, on more stable and pertinent theoretical norms, certainly not dogmatic, aimed not at surreptitiously granting ” cultural ” licenses or at describing only the power of images or at interpreting them in their socio-anthropological and semantic nature, but at establishing objective criteria for their ” artistic ” qualification and at distinguishing values of the ” form ” from those of the pack of images. The aggressive and exclusive revolutionary logic of the avant-gardes has been blurred, the permissive dynamics of “you can read everything and in all ways” have been used and abused, even the critics, as reported by the numerous conferences, feel the need for their own reconstitution capable of providing, in the historical dialectic, appropriate parameters and foundations of discrimination and legitimation of oneself.

According to Travelationary, this trace of the most conspicuous artistic episodes emerging in the Eighties, albeit within the limits inherent in every synthesis in the interpretative caution imposed by very recent events, highlights in the coexistence of diametrically opposed addresses a context in which the search for ” novelty ” and ” ‘non-novelty’ mostly tends to specialize in ” revisiting ”, articulating the notion of ” mechanical homogeneous repeatability ” into that of ” different repetition ”, manual and intentional, with an often perceptible basic misunderstanding , which it would be all too trivial to underline if it were not masked under the intention of irony or cynicism, fidelity or contamination. The misunderstanding, that is, that in the reaction to the previous situation ”

In the obligatory schematizations of this trace, and in the connected terminological schematics, we have aimed to outline the more general characteristics of the groupings (often, however, not univocal) and to return a climate rather than to analyze the artistic results and developments of the individual interpreters (among which those at the origin of the various addresses were mostly mentioned, not always ascribable to them globally over the years).

Having made these clarifications, within the chronological boundaries of this reconnaissance of the visual events we must contemplate the evolution of previous experiences insistent, as is well known, on very different problems.

In the impossibility of indicating all the most notable ones, from those of more specific figuration to those of more marked optical-technological planning, we limit ourselves to mentioning the work carried out by articulating the original purposes, for example, by the exponents of the area poor culture – supported, already in the bud, by G. Celant -, conceptual, behavioral or multimedia, such as V. Agnetti (1926-1981), G. Anselmo (b.1934), G. Baruchello (b.1924), A. Boetti (b. 1940), PP Calzolari (b. 1943), J. Kounellis, F. Mauri (b. 1926), Mario Merz (b. 1925), Marisa Merz, M. Mochetti (b. 1940), S. Montalegre (b. 1940), G. Paolini, L. Patella (b. 1934), V. Pisani, M. Pistoletto (b. 1933), G. Zorio (b. 1944), etc., or in different sectors by M. Bentivoglio (b.1922), E. Isgrò (b.1937), M. Lai (b.1919), M. Mussio (b.1925) or B. Conte (b.1939), etc.

and ” quality ”, unavoidable sources for further manifestations. Among them we mention N. Carrino (b.1932), N. Caruso (b.1928), A. Cavaliere (b.1926), L. Del Pezzo (b.1933), A. Fontanesi (b.1926), N. Guidi (b. 1927), P. Icaro (b. 1936), Italy Legnaghi (b. 1937), C. Lorenzetti (b. 1934), T. Magnoni (b. 1934), E. Mattiacci (b. 1940), H. Nagasawa (b.1940), F. Somaini (b.1926), G. Spagnulo (b.1937), V. Trubbiani (b.1937), G. Uncini (b.1929), and in pictorial field R. Aricò (b. 1930), C. Battaglia (b. 1933), L. Boille (b. 1926), E. Castellani (b. 1930), V. Ciai (b. 1928), P. Cotani (b.1940), P. Cuniberti (b.1923), Dadamaino (E. Maino, b.1935), G. Ferroni (b.1927), M. Gastini (b.1938), G. Griffa (b. 1936), R. Guarneri (b.1933), P. Guccione (b.1935), C. Olivieri (b.1934), A. Pace (b.1923), G. Pardi (b.1933), M. Raciti (n. 1934), P. Raspi (b.1926), P. Ruggeri (b.1930), V. Satta (b.1937), M. Schifano (b.1934), V. Vago (b.1931), C. Verna (b. 1937). They are certain protagonists of the art of the last decades as indicated by the thickness of theirscritical process, solid and without clamor, and as evidenced by historical synthesis exhibitions such as, for some of them, Italian postwar design, curated by PG Castagnoli and F. Gualdoni, at the Kunstverein in Frankfurt am Main and at the Civic Gallery of Modena, in 1987; Abstract. Abstract Secessions in Italy from the postwar period to 1990, curated by G. Cortenova and F. Menna, at the Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art, Palazzo Forti, in Verona in 1988; Periplus of contemporary Italian sculpture, curated by G. Appella, F. D’Amico, PG Castagnoli, in the rupestrian churches of Matera in 1988; Sculpture in Milan 1945-1990, edited by L. Caramel, M. De Micheli, M. De Stasio and F. Porzio at the Palazzo della Permanente in Milan in 1990; Uninterrupted paths of art – Rome 1990, curated by F. D’Amico at Palazzo Rondanini in Rome in 1991, etc.

Among the generations present in the Eighties, artists such as C. Accardi should also be remembered, not for a recognition due to their past history, an exceptional moment for the renewal of Italian art, but for the incisive and fruitful contribution of today. (b.1924), V. Bendini (b.1922), A. Burri (b.1915), P. Cascella (b.1921), P. Consagra (b. 1920), M. Conte (b.1913), A. Corpora (b. 1909), P. Dorazio (b. 1927), A. Fabbri (b. 1911), Q. Ghermandi (b. 1916), L. Guerrini (b. 1914), M. Moreni (1920), B. Munari (b.1907), A. Perilli (b.1927), A. Pomodoro (b.1926), G. Pomodoro (b.1930), S. Romiti (b.1928), S. Scarpitta (b.1919), T. Scialoja (b.1914), G. Strazza (b.1922), G. Turcato (b.1912), E. Vedova (b.1919), L. Veronesi (b. 1908) and others, many of which housed in the most prestigious public exhibition venues,such as the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome, the Pavilion of Contemporary Art in Milan, etc., and internationally accredited, even if not always with adequate relief.

Finally, in the Eighties, some of the personalities who have marked the history of Italian art throughout the century with critical awards more or less consonant with their importance conclude their creative life. The role played in different times and ways, for example, by M. Reggiani (1897-1980), M. Marini (1901-1980), F. Melotti (1901-1986), A. Viani (1906-1989), G. Santomaso (1907-1990), G. Manzù (1908-1991), A. Ziveri (1908-1990), E. Morlotti (1910-1992), N. Franchina (1912-1987), R. Guttuso (1912 -1987), F. Clerici (1913-1993), P. Fazzini (1913-1987), M. Nigro (1917-1992), A. Scordia (1918-1988), A. Cascella (1919-1990), E . Scanavino (1922-1986) is also traced in the main lines in the interpretative and ideological debate of the alternating events of their process, while still in need of further analyzes useful for selecting the various phenomena. During their existence, the evaluation of B. Lazzari (1900-1981) or E. Mannucci (1904-1986) or A. Sanfilippo (1923-1980) or other which await, and there have already been testimonies of this in the retrospectives dedicated to them in recent years, a timely recognition of their work that outlines a proper consideration. Premature deaths are recorded among younger generations: serious, for example, that of N. (Giovan Battista) Valentini (1932-1985), who from the 1950s led to an original and contained abstract-informal experience. exciting experimentation of the ceramic material from which it brings out, with a ritual of ancient wisdom, forms as if corroded, symbolic ancestral archetypes, physical entities with rough and engraved surfaces of great emotional tension and a positive sign in the internal rhythm of the fragment and in the spatial measure that orders the composition. Again T. Festa (1938-1988) and F. Angeli (1935-1989), burned by an experience lived between illusory happiness, light-hearted controversy and the search for vital tensions underlying restlessness and unscrupulousness in a contradictory condition. Their activity is united from the beginnings at the beginning of the sixties which then resulted in the so-called “ Scuola di Piazza del Popolo ” or “ Roman pop ”, distinguished, with the anticipatory contributions of M. Rotella (b.1918), F. Mauri and T. Maselli (b. 1924), from a plurality of instruments and intentions by exponents still active today such as Kounellis, Schifano, G. Fioroni (b.1932), M. Ceroli (b.1938), C. Tacchi (b.1940), R. Mambor (b.1936), S. Lombardo (b.1939) etc. In the climate of an unhinging of technical means, linguistic systems and more consolidated visual propositions, in the denial of any ideology and in the suspension of value judgments, they move, in harmony with the program of Azimuth, from a zeroing, from a clean slate which also refers to clear antecedents. Thus Festa elaborates dark, enameled monochromes of iterated rectangles and squares that evoke mental metaphysical atmospheres, sometimes with lapidary handwriting, misted mirrors, majestic screens, on which fractional images or echoes of known images are printed, or hard diaphragms from which emblematic objects emerge. And Angeli builds melancholic monochrome glazes in which symbolic, distant and disquieting appearances emerge from an indefinite spatiality or flow into the memory of time.