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This multi­di­sci­pli­nary exhibi­tion celebrates the flowering of Italian creati­vity during the twenty-five years that began with the fall of the Fascist regime in 1943. After the war, Italy struggled to recover from the devas­ta­tions of Fascist rule, Allied and German occup­a­tions, and aerial bombings. As the country underwent recovery, myriad aspects of society were examined and subse­quently trans­formed, from means of governing to styles of building.

In economic terms, recon­struc­tion was a success. During the period now known as the “Italian Miracle”, which peaked from 1958 to 1963, social and economic change trans­formed the nation. Italy became an inter­na­tional cultural leader, and its design and style became synony­mous with quality and innova­tion. By 1968, the end point of this exhibi­tion, many young Italians were questio­ning extra­va­gant consump­tion and assessing unful­filled promises for social reform. Student protests and worker strikes broke out, fractu­ring the nation.

Painting and Sculpture
Italian artists emerging from the traumas of World War II set out to create art with a democratic political message, reacting against the classi­ci­zing, figura­tive style advocated by the Fascist regime. Contro­versy arose quickly, however, within the ranks of leftist artists. In 1948, the Italian Communist Party asserted that art should be figura­tive in order to conve the party’s political message. While Renato Guttuso adhered to this platform. Giulio Turcato and Emilio Vedova began to splinter their compo­si­tions into abstracted, energetic scenes. Thus, abstrac­tion took root, becoming the predo­mi­nant form of vanguard Italian art in the 1950s.

Several pivotal abstract artists broke with the notion of a politi­call motivated art; creation became an existen­tial, private realm. Lucio Fontana punctured – and in the late 1950s slashed – his surfaces to expand the flat picture plane into three-dimen­sional space. He went on to promote his theory of ‘Spazia­lismo’ – a four-dimen­sional art intended to integrate color, form, and space with sound, movement and time – in a variety of mediums. His contem­porary, Alberto Burri, began to produce anti-illusio­nistic works that exploit seemingly inexpres­sive materials like tar, pumice, ad burlap. The art of Burri and Fontana, als well as Afro, Giuseppe Capogrossi, Ettore Colla, Vedova, and others, came to be known in Italy as ‘Arte Informale’. Its exponents were not bound by a unified style but rather by their commit­ment to formal concerns and an abstract syntax informed by gesture.

Several artists turned to monochrome in order to explore the artwork as an autono­mous entity, repudia­ting the gestural and existen­tial concerns of Arte Informale. Enrico Castel­lani, Piero Dorazio, Francesco Lo Savio and Piero Manzoni were all propon­ents of cool, rational styles.

Beginning in the late 1950s, artists explored Neo-Dada and Pop-art themes, trans­forming a range of antia­es­thetic materials – from burned plastic to excrement – into high art. Manzoni converted the artist’s body into an art object, packaging and signing his own corporeal emissions as if they had been mass-produced. In the 1960s, artists expanded their inves­ti­ga­tions to encompass concep­tual reflec­tions on the nature and function of art objects. Jannis Kounellis began to paint words onto his canvases to inves­ti­gate the ways images are perceived. His lingu­istic designa­tions are visual signs repre­sen­ting intan­gible concepts that have no explicit pictorial equivalents.

From found objects, Pino Pascali made flimsy repli­ca­tions of military weapons, inope­rable decoys that ironi­cally protested the escala­ting conflict in Vietnam.

Arte Povera (meaning “poor art”) concludes the painting and sculpture section of the exhibi­tion. Much of this work employed humble materials in an antie­li­tist attempt to break down the barriers between art and life. Such artists as Giovanni Anselmo, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Kounellis, Mario Merz, Marisa Merz, Giuseppe Penone, and Gilberto Zorio explored dynamics of trans­for­ma­tion and growth through combi­na­tioons of natural and indus­trial substances.

Glass and Ceramics
Glass­ma­king and ceramics, ancient crafts with long tradi­tions in Italy, were revita­lized during the postwar years. Tradi­tional glass­ma­king techni­ques were the founda­tion for design innova­tions achieved by Paolo Venini and others. Clay’s supple­ness and ease of handling attracted several fine artists, who took up ceramics as a sculp­tural medium. Fontana created ‘Concetto spaziale’ (Spatial Concept) vases, which were punctured and slashed like his canvases. Sculptor Fausto Melotti created whimsical, imagi­na­tive objects and vessels.

Jewelry
In the 1940s, artists such as Carla Accardi and Melotti started creating decora­tive objects for the body. Form the late 1950s, many artists became attracted to the inherent mallea­bi­lity and fluidity of precious metals, trans­forming their materials into small, often highly expres­sive sculp­tures that incor­po­rate in miniature the styles and princi­ples of their work in other mediums.

Photo­graphy
Neorea­lism played a key role in the field of photo­graphy as well as cinema. Photo­graphs in this style protrayed grim poverty and urban decay in a documen­tary, testi­mo­nial mode. In the late 1940s and the 1950s, photo­graphers of the groups ‘La Bussola and La Gondola’ advanced subjec­tive, formalist approa­ches. Along with others, they documented the people and landscape of Italy (concen­tra­ting in parti­cular on the south) in picturesque, artistic images. In the boom years of the late 1950s ‘paparazzi’ photo­jour­na­lists fed a growing appetite for sensa­tional images of haute-bourgeois scandals and celebrity escapades.

Cinema
By using authentic settings and working-class themes, the neorea­list genre shattered Fascist-era propa­gan­distic cinematic conven­tions. Through films such as Luchino Visconti’s ‘Osses­sione’ 1942 and Roberto Rossellini’s ‘Roma città aperta’ (Open City, 1945), neoralism became both an inter­na­tional sensation and an influ­en­tial force shaping other artistic forms.

Directors like Giuseppe De Santis and Visconti went on to broaden neorealism’s scope by fusing its moral message with the melodrama and sensua­lity. In the 1950s, Federico Fellini and Michel­an­gelo Antonioni turned away from neorea­lism, making more abstract films and the imagi­na­tion. Pier Paolo Pasolini continued this trend in the 1960s, giving poetic content prece­dence over natura­lism. Cinema is evoked in this exhibi­tion though posters, two programs of clips, and scree­nings of important films.

Fashion
In the early 1950, Italien fashion designers posed their first serious challenge to Parisian preemi­nence. Giovanni Battista Giorgini, the leader in estab­li­shing an identity for Italian Fashion, empha­sized weara­bi­lity, practi­ca­lity, and simpli­city of cut. At Florence’s Sala Bianca, he intro­duced inter­na­tional Buyers to the houses of Carosa, Marucelli, Pucci, Veneziani, and others. Many of the Sala Bianca runway models wore shoes designed by Salvatore Ferragamo, who experi­mented with uncommon shapes and unusual materials throughout the postwar period.

Archi­tec­ture
Archi­tec­ture and urban planning provoked impas­sioned debates after the war because of their essential role in recon­struc­tion: in replacing countless destroyed struc­tures and in shaping a new social order. The Milan-based group ‘Movimento di Studi per l’Archi­tettura’ attempted to sustain and invigo­rate the predo­mi­nant prewar style, Ratio­na­lism, which had been shaped by early Modernist princi­ples. Archi­tects aligned with neorea­lism, a widespread trend also predating the war, made reference to rural and verna­cular struc­tures in their buildings in an attempt to transcend regional and class distinc­tions. The Rome-based ‘Associa­zione per l’Archi­tettura Organica’ promoted organic archi­tec­ture, which was based on Frank Lloyd Wright’s princi­ples of design and his notion of democratic idealism.

Design
The ability to employ both advanced indus­trial techno­lo­gies and humble handi­c­raft techni­ques contri­buted to Italy’s postwar reputa­tion for high-quality and expres­sive design. The Italian stylistic vocabu­lary – incor­po­ra­ting asymmetry, reduced clean forms, and “aerody­namic” profiles – and the use of simple, new and readily available local materials proved to be examples for inter­na­tional industry. In the late 1950s, the success of Italian products as export goods fueled in art of the nation’s extra­or­di­nary economic growth.

This exhibi­tion has been designed by architect Gae Aulenti, well known for her instal­la­tions for the Musée d’Orsay in Paris and Palazzo Grassi in Venice.