Forty-one years after the exhibition Identité italienne. L'art en Italie depuis 1959, curated by Germano Celant at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris in the summer of 1981, an overview of the Italian art scene between 1960 and 1975 is taking place in France - at the MAMAC in Nice - involving 60 artists and 130 works from public and private lenders and artists' archives, under the curatorship of art historian Valérie Da Costa, who has defined the new reading as necessary.
Compared to Celant's militant approach, which consciously emphasised the chronological and documentary aspect of the multifaceted, conflictual and complex Italian post-war political, sociological and cultural context of the time, so that "chronology became a reading of Italian art history", the current exhibition at MAMAC prefers an easier subdivision into three main topics, surely appealing to a contemporary audience: A Society of the Image, Reconstructing Nature and Memories of the Body.
Numerous works have left their mark in the history of art, among them Pino Pascali with Campi Arati and Canali di irrigazione of 1967, Carla Accardi with Cilindrocono of 1972, Luciano Fabro with L'Italia del dolore of 1975, and again the series of I Travestiti by Lisetta Carmi (1965-1970), the Pratone by Gufram of 1986, Fabio Mauri with Intellettuale. Il Vangelo secondo Matteo by/about Pier Paolo Pasolini from 1975.
The perception of Italian art in the decade 1960-1970 as - to quote Celant again - a political, ethical, social and existential imaginary remains overwhelming. From Rome to Milan, from Turin to Genoa, a new generation of artists took a risk, starting from the teachings of their noble fathers Fontana and Burri (space and surface), so revolutionising with a multiplicity of expressions and media the ways of understanding and interpreting a present that was undergoing a radical change.
List of artists:
Carla Accardi, Vincenzo Agnetti, Franco Angeli, Giovanni Anselmo, Archizoom, Michelangelo Antonioni, Gianfranco Baruchello, Tomaso Binga, Irma Blank, Alighiero Boetti, Marisa Busanel, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Lisetta Carmi, Elisabetta Catalano, Mario Ceroli, Claudio Cintoli, Gino De Dominicis, Luciano Fabro, Federico Fellini, Rosa Foschi, Piero Gilardi, Giorgio Griffa, Alberto Grifi, Laura Grisi, Gruppo Strum, Paolo Icaro, Jannis Kounellis, Ketty La Rocca, Maria Lai, Sergio Lombardo, Renato Mambor, Lucia Marcucci, Titina Maselli, Fabio Mauri, Eliseo Mattiacci, Marisa Merz, Mario Merz, Franco Mazzucchelli, Ugo Nespolo, Luigi Ontani, Giulio Paolini, Claudio Parmiggiani, Pino Pascali, Luca Maria Patella, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Giuseppe Penone, Marinella Pirelli, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Carol Rama, Mimmo Rotella, Mario Schifano, Ettore Spalletti, Cesare Tacchi, Gilberto Zorio.
« Vita Nuova. Nouveaux enjeux de l'art en Italie 1960-1975 » (14 mai - 2 octobre 2022), MAMAC, Nice.
Pino Pascali, Campi arati e canali di irrigazione, 1967. Cascate, 1966. Collection Musée d’Art moderne et contemporain de la Ville de Strasbourg. / Piero Gilardi, Tronco Sedile, 1966. Vestito-natura Anguria, 1967. Courtesy Fondazione Centro Studi Piero Gilardi – Torino. /Giorgio Ceretti, Pietro Derossi, Riccardo Rosso, Pratone, collection Gufram, 1986, Centre national des arts plastiques.
© Photo : Jean-Christophe Lett.
« Vita Nuova. Nouveaux enjeux de l'art en Italie 1960-1975 » (14 mai - 2 octobre 2022), MAMAC, Nice.
Luciano Fabro, Italia del dolore, 1975, carte routière, métal et ficelle, 230 × 100 × 5 cm. Collection privée, Milan. © Photo : Nelly Dietzel. / Alighiero Boetti, Mappa (Mettere al mondo il mondo),1971-1973, broderie à la main sur lin,163 × 217 cm. MAXXI, Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo, Rome. © Courtesy Fondazione MAXXI – Photo : M3Studio – Adagp, Paris 2022.
© Photo : Jean-Christophe Lett.
« Vita Nuova. Nouveaux enjeux de l'art en Italie 1960-1975 » (14 mai - 2 octobre 2022), MAMAC, Nice.
Federico Fellini, La Dolce Vita, 1960 ©1960 – PATHÉ FILMS – RIAMA FILM / Fabio Mauri, Marilyn, 1964 © Collection privée, Milan – Courtesy The Estate of Fabio Mauri and Hauser & Wirth.
© Photo : Jean-Christophe Lett.
« Vita Nuova. Nouveaux enjeux de l'art en Italie 1960-1975 » (14 mai - 2 octobre 2022), MAMAC, Nice.
Lisetta Carmi, I Travestiti, 1965-1970, impression gélatinoargentique (2017), dimensions variables. Courtesy Ciaccia Levi, Paris. © Lisetta Carmi et Martini & Ronchetti.
© Photo : Jean-Christophe Lett.
« Vita Nuova. Nouveaux enjeux de l'art en Italie 1960-1975 » (14 mai - 2 octobre 2022), MAMAC, Nice.
Giorgio Griffa, Obliquo, 1971, Verticale orizzontale, 1972. Linee orizzontali, 1974. Acrylique sur toile, dimensions variables. Courtesy de l’artiste et de l’Archivio Giorgio Griffa. © Photo : Giulio Caresio – Adagp, Paris 2022.
© Photo : Jean-Christophe Lett.