They expanded their initially inconspicuous material ensembles into extensive room installations. In ironic groups of objects, which are often accompanied by texts, z. B. Stefano Arienti (* 1961), Antonio Calenati (* 1962), Alessandra Galbiati (* 1963), Franceso Maria Garbelli (* 1962), Liliana Moro (* 1961), Mario Airò (* 1961) and Antonio Riello (* 1958) create three-dimensionalsituations that reflect both social issues and individual mythologies. The metal sculptor G. Spagnulo turned to minimal art. Alighiero Boetti (* 1940, † 1994) developed a special form of Concept Art with his »geographical works«. Maurizio Nannucci (* 1939), F. Plessi, Bernhard Rüdiger (* 1964), Massimo Kaufmann (* 1963) and Alba d’Urbana (* 1955) work in the multimedia sector. Ketty La Rocca (* 1938, † 1976) and Gina Pane (* 1953, † 1990) With their installations and performances, they are regarded as early representatives of haunting body art.
Painting: Futurism, to which G. Balla, U. Boccioni, C. Carrà, L. Russolo and G. Severini turned in 1910, represented speed as an expression of modern technology and way of life using painterly means. An early reaction to the aesthetics of movement dynamics shows the Pittura metafisica, which explains the silence of inanimate things (G. De Chirico, Carrà). Its far-reaching consequences can be grasped in the emergence of surrealist painting, as well as in the painters of the New Objectivity in Germany; also G. Morandi’s meditative still lifeshave their starting point here, while A. Modigliani, who worked in Paris, followed up on H. de Toulouse-Lautrec and P. Cézanne. For more articles about Italy and Europe, please follow Programingplease.
Italian painting was influenced by the pittura metafisica until the 1940s, at the same time it was characterized by the “Novecento italiano”, which proclaimed a return to the great painting tradition of Italy. De Chirico, Carrà and numerous other painters who welcomed the turn towards a classicist and idealist attitude were among them. In Paris, Severini, who was committed to Cubism, joined A. Savinio, who had followed his brother De Chirico, who worked here from 1925-30. Important painters in this context are also M. Sironi, F. Casorati, M. Campigli, F. De Pisis or Ferruccio Ferrazzi (* 1891, † 1979). Anti-heroic themes, on the other hand, were chosen by the members of the “Scuola Romana” (1927–33): Scipione, M. Mafai and Antonietta Raphäel-Mafai (* 1900, † 1975). The artist group »Corrente«, founded in Milan in 1938, turned against the fascist endeavors within the »Novecento«. Most of its members joined forces in Venice in 1946 in the “Fronte Nuovo delle Arti”. This artists’ association, which stood for a new beginning, soon split into an abstract direction, among others. with Afro, R. Birolli, A. Corpora, G. Santomaso and v. a. E. Vedova (“Gruppo degli Otto Pittori Italiani”) and a socially critical-realistic group with Guttuso. G. Capogrossi, P. Dorazio and others are also representatives of concrete painting, while Vedova co-founded abstract expressionism. The works of V. Adami or D. Gnoli reflect Pop Art without, however, addressing the consumer world or the aesthetics of goods. Since the late 1950s, painters such as Fontana, Manzoni and A. Burri have provided international impulses to abolish the boundaries between traditional genres and the concept of art. In the context of an »analytical painting«, Giorgio Griffa (* 1936), Niele Toroni (* 1937) and Gianfranco Zappettini (* 1939) concentrated in the 1970ssystematically on the effects of the material character and the traceability of the production of the picture or picture object. From the mid-1970s onwards, Italian artists began a conscious return to the limits of the traditional genre of painting, which would soon have a global impact, with a revival of figuration, obviously following on from Italian painting from the 1920s to 1940s. This direction, called Transavanguardia (or Arte cifra), is characterized by a sensual and subjective imagery full of poetic signs and historical quotations. Its best-known representatives include S. Chia, F. Clemente, E. Cucchi, M. Paladino and Nicola De Maria (* 1954).
In addition to the artists from the Arte povera and Transavanguardia circle, who today generally pursue their own path and among whom, at the beginning, less well-known artists were able to assert themselves with their own work (Giovanni Anselmo, * 1934; Gilberto Zorio, * 1944; Ettore Spalletti, * 1940, † 2019; Pier Paolo Calzolari, * 1943, Following these trends, an art movement developed that, in the course of postmodern discussions, playfully and at the same time radically adopts and varies the various forms and contents of the earlier avant-gardes and examines general questions such as identity and anonymity as well as aesthetic immanence and social relevance. In the field of painting, Amedeo Martegani (* 1963), Mario Dellavedova (* 1958), Marco Cingolani (* 1961), Piero Varroni (* 1951), Giovanni Albertini (* 1959) and Antonella Mazzoni (* 1957) with the possibilities of this medium in the age of communication, whereby they often fall back on forms of international pop art and magical realism in the succession of Pittura metafisica.
Various tendencies can be seen in photography: As a representative of Italian neorealism, M. Giacomelli created unadorned photographs of people and landscapes, in addition to which he devoted himself to formal aesthetic experiments. W. Niedermayr explores in multi-part, strongly brightened photographic works with a sober, objective view, among other things. the traces of mass tourism in ski areas. Massimo Vitali (* 1944) captures everyday scenes with a distant panoramic view, Luisa Lambri (* 1969) documents architectural spaces and Vanessa Beecroft portrays groups of people she has arranged herself.
