Venice – Art: Peggy Guggenheim Collection - Imagine.
New Imagery in Italian Art 1960-1969.
At the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, until September 19, the exhibition,
Imagine. New Imagery in Italian Art 1960-1969, is curated by Luca Massimo
Barbero. This fresh perspective on European post war art looks at figuration in
the Italian avant-garde in the 1960s. In Italy during the 1960s, at the height
of the economic boom, artistic experimentation flourished at an unprecedented
pace and intensity. The goal was to create a new vocabulary of signs and images
capable of interpreting the vitality of contemporary culture and society.
Above. Mario Schifano – En Plein Air – 1964.
Imagine. New Imagery in Italian Art 1960-1969
Fabio Mauri – Cinema e Figura – 1960 – detail
Cinema and Figure
This exhibition draws on the
richness of Italian art production in those years. The theme, the leitmotif, of
the exhibition is how the figured image, transient and transformed, departing
from the monochrome, served to construct a new language of representation in a
little known phase of Italian art history.
Imagine. New Imagery in Italian Art 1960-1969
Io Non Amo La Natura - 1964
I do not Like Nature
The exhibition, in a tightly
curated sequence of galleries, lays out the multiple lines of research of
several of Italian artists who, emerging from the zeroing of the
neo-avant-garde, reconstituted a new world of images, figures, and narrative.
On view are works by artists such as Franco Angeli, Mario Ceroli, Domenico
Gnoli, Giosetta Fioroni, Tano Festa, Fabio Mauri, Francesco lo Savio,
Michelangelo Pistoletto, Mario Schifano, Giulio Paolini, Jannis Kounellis, Pino
Pascali.
Imagine. New Imagery in Italian Art 1960-1969
Domenico Gnoli – Red Dress Collar - 1969
With no claim to definitiveness,
Imagine. New Imagery in Italian Art 1960-1969 sets out to supersede, from the
vantage point of today, the so-called ‘orthodoxies’ of the time, freeing visual
research from adherence to movements or subordination to category.
Imagine. New Imagery in Italian Art 1960-1969
Domenico Gnoli – Due Dormienti – 1969
Two Sleepers
An intense sequence of emblematic
works captures the vitality of that brief period of time, a mere nine years,
and uncovers, by diversity and assonance, in an unceasing process of exchange
and dialogue, that melting-pot of visual art, in a process of ‘becoming’ which
gave rise to the schools and movements of future avant-gardes.
Imagine. New Imagery in Italian Art 1960-1969
Michelangelo Pistoletto – Mappamondo – 1966-68
Globe
Mario Schifano – Un Paesaggio Dedicato a Jean Luc
Godard – 1967
A Landscape for Jean Luc Godard
Imagine. New Imagery in Italian Art 1960-1969
Giulio Paolini – Autoritratto – 1968
Self-Portrait
Imagine. New Imagery in Italian Art 1960-1969
Pino Pascali – Pugnale – 1965
Dagger
Imagine. New Imagery in Italian Art 1960-1969
Michelangelo Pistoletto – Filo Eletrico Appeso al
Muro (plexiglass) – 1964
Electrical Wire Hanging from the Wall
Imagine. New Imagery in Italian Art 1960-1969
Michelangelo Pistoletto – Rosa Bruciata (Oggetti in
Meno 1965-1966) 1965
Burnt Rose
Imagine. New Imagery in Italian Art 1960-1969
Jannis Kounellis – Margherita di Fuoco – 1967
Daisy of Fire
