Since the exhibition held at the Centre Pompidou in 1981: "Italian Identity. Art in Italy since 1959," curated by Germano Celant, there has not been an exhibition in France that proposed a broad rethinking of the Italian art scene. However, Italy experienced a particularly fertile and exceptional period from the early 1960s to the mid-1970s, which is also linked in particular to the richness of cinema and literature of those years.
The exhibition aims to reveal the exceptional vitality of this artistic scene, profoundly renewed by a young generation of artists (born between the 1920s and the 1940s) active in Rome, Milan, Turin, Genoa and whose work began to be exhibited at the beginning of the 1960s; a generation bringing new ways of understanding and making art, thus illustrating a form of vita nuova (“new life”) – a title borrowed from Dante’s eponymous book (Vita Nuova) which, while being an ode to love, affirms a new way of writing – which runs like a breath through Italian art and contributes to its international recognition.
Thus, in connection with the profound transformations of international artistic practices in the 1960s, Italian culture was marked by various societal and political issues that were echoed in artistic creation. During the 1960s and 1970s, the transformation of Italy (industrialization, economic boom, consumer society, development of mass media) involved new modes of representation (notably pictorial) that were influenced by cinema, television, the press and advertising, and changed the way in which artists represented their era.
Faced with these societal upheavals, some artists, with an ecological conscience, are turning to a form of degrowth art by choosing to take a close look at nature, which they represent with primary or artificial materials. Aware of these upheavals, they are also investing in the body, which appears as a medium that crosses creative processes and involves new participatory issues, particularly in public spaces.
All these modes of expression (painting, sculpture, photography, video, performance installation, environment) cover these years marked by collective commitments (Venice Biennale, Milan Triennale of 1968) and political instability (attacks in Piazza Fontana in Milan in 1969, Golpe Borghese (Borghese coup d'état) in Rome in 1970). 1960 corresponds to the first solo exhibitions of a whole new generation of young Roman artists (Giosetta Fioroni, Mario Schifano, Franco Angeli, Jannis Kounellis...) who give a new direction to Italian art.
1975 refers to the traumatic death of the writer, poet and director Pier Paolo Pasolini, who had a significant impact on the literary and cinematographic life of that decade and closed an era.
The exhibition is organized around three axes that are considered in a porous manner in order to show how certain issues intersect and run through the work of certain artists (nature/body/performance; politics/body/performance). Conceived in a multidisciplinary manner, the exhibition also aims to show the links that have been established between visual creation, design and cinema.
Vita Nuova. New Challenges for Art in Italy 1960-1975.
Snoeck| N° d'inventaire | 25703 |
| Format | 24.5 x 28.5 |
| Détails | 176 p;, richly illustrated, bound. |
| Publication | Ghent, 2022 |
| Etat | Nine |
| ISBN | 9789461617323 |
Since the exhibition held at the Centre Pompidou in 1981: "Italian Identity. Art in Italy since 1959," curated by Germano Celant, there has not been an exhibition in France that proposed a broad rethinking of the Italian art scene. However, Italy experienced a particularly fertile and exceptional period from the early 1960s to the mid-1970s, which is also linked in particular to the richness of cinema and literature of those years.
The exhibition aims to reveal the exceptional vitality of this artistic scene, profoundly renewed by a young generation of artists (born between the 1920s and the 1940s) active in Rome, Milan, Turin, Genoa and whose work began to be exhibited at the beginning of the 1960s; a generation bringing new ways of understanding and making art, thus illustrating a form of vita nuova (“new life”) – a title borrowed from Dante’s eponymous book (Vita Nuova) which, while being an ode to love, affirms a new way of writing – which runs like a breath through Italian art and contributes to its international recognition.
Thus, in connection with the profound transformations of international artistic practices in the 1960s, Italian culture was marked by various societal and political issues that were echoed in artistic creation. During the 1960s and 1970s, the transformation of Italy (industrialization, economic boom, consumer society, development of mass media) involved new modes of representation (notably pictorial) that were influenced by cinema, television, the press and advertising, and changed the way in which artists represented their era.
Faced with these societal upheavals, some artists, with an ecological conscience, are turning to a form of degrowth art by choosing to take a close look at nature, which they represent with primary or artificial materials. Aware of these upheavals, they are also investing in the body, which appears as a medium that crosses creative processes and involves new participatory issues, particularly in public spaces.
All these modes of expression (painting, sculpture, photography, video, performance installation, environment) cover these years marked by collective commitments (Venice Biennale, Milan Triennale of 1968) and political instability (attacks in Piazza Fontana in Milan in 1969, Golpe Borghese (Borghese coup d'état) in Rome in 1970). 1960 corresponds to the first solo exhibitions of a whole new generation of young Roman artists (Giosetta Fioroni, Mario Schifano, Franco Angeli, Jannis Kounellis...) who give a new direction to Italian art.
1975 refers to the traumatic death of the writer, poet and director Pier Paolo Pasolini, who had a significant impact on the literary and cinematographic life of that decade and closed an era.
The exhibition is organized around three axes that are considered in a porous manner in order to show how certain issues intersect and run through the work of certain artists (nature/body/performance; politics/body/performance). Conceived in a multidisciplinary manner, the exhibition also aims to show the links that have been established between visual creation, design and cinema.