C. Caputo, Surrealism in Venice and Milan. The Cavallino and Naviglio Galleries in the 1940s and 50s: Exhibitions and Publications, in Geographies of Surrealism., a cura di A. Nigro e I. Schiaffini, Paris, Mélusine numérique, 2021 [ISBN: 978-2-9568290-0-3]. (original) (raw)
Related papers
Mélusine numérique, No. 3, 2021
The essay examines the figure of the Swiss-Italian art collector Renato Wild, who distinguished himself for his interest in the applied arts, which culminated in the establishment of the Ar.Ca company in association with the architect Guglielmo Ulrich, but also for his passion for the paintings of Leonor Fini, of whom he was one of the main collectors in Italy and worldwide. On the basis of previously unpublished documents, the contribution reconstructs for the first time the history and personality of this important art collector in post-World War II Italy.
Mori Gioia_2013_New York 1945: Fabrizio Clerici, "Italian Surrealist"
in "Fabrizio Clerici 1913-1993", a cura dell’Archivio Fabrizio Clerici, Milano (Skira) 2013, pp. 40-51
Fabrizio Clerici non è forse uno dei prìncipi di questo realismo irreale che sarà il segno distintivo del ventesimo secolo? Come la natura Clerici arriva alla semplicità attraverso innumerevoli particolari. Non manca neppure uno spillo a questa legione di angeli e arcangeli che proteggono la sua casa. In essa non vi penetra oggetto che non sia sublime e la cui presenza non sia carica di segreti.
Oggetti Poetici: Preliminary Notes for a Surrealist Rereading of Arte povera
ISSS Surrealisms, 2022
As early as 1967, Italian critics such as Carla Lonzi and Marisa Volpi noticed how Surrealism had influenced the works of Arte povera, the most important Italian art movement of the postwar period. The relationship with Surrealism remained for a long time removed from the critical and historical discussion, not least to emphasize the movement’s all-Italian specificity. This contribution, considering critics’ remarks, artists’ statements, and the artworks themselves, will try to recompose this gap, proposing to highlight the surrealist background of many Arte Povera works and actions. In some cases, it will be possible to trace direct and declared influences, made possible by the significant presence of surrealist works in the Italian art market and collections. However, in the most intriguing cases, the influence of Surrealism is more subtle and conceptual, and less direct. It must be traced on a more theoretical level, focusing on the aesthetic functioning of artworks. Building on Gillo Dorfles’ considerations of the value of the object for international artistic research in the 1960s, the contribution will propose an extensive recourse to the surrealist category of “oggetto poetico” (poetic object, objet poétique). The presentation will aim to demonstrate how this surrealist label allows emphasizing the constitutive duplicity of Arte povera works, highlighting the centrality of the materiality and tangible presence of the work, while at the same time underscoring its associative and evocative power. In the first part, I will present a brief historical definition of "poetic objects." I will summarize the Surrealist debate on objects between the 1920s and 1930s and present its Italian reception in the 1960s and 1970s. In the second part, I will consider the Arte povera's anti-object drive. Germano Celant and many of the movement’s artists repeatedly declared themselves against the notion of "object." I will address the genesis of this rejection, highlight its ideological reasons, and propose a partial overcoming of it. Finally, in the third and final part, I will try to apply the Surrealist concept of "poetic object" to some of Arte Povera’s works. Starting from the critical considerations of Gillo Dorfles and Marisa Volpi, considering the Italian reception of surrealist objects, I will address a series of case studies based on works by Giuseppe Penone, Pino Pascali, and Michelangelo Pistoletto. In conclusion, I will focus on a particularly relevant case: Jannis Kounellis.
Giulio Carlo Argan et le surréalisme: une approche pas évidente
Annual Conference of International Society for the Study of Surrealism: Surrealisms Paris 2024Surréalisme Paris 2024 - ISSS, 2014
Panel: “Studi sul Surrealismo” (1973). Surrealism in Italy in 1970’s throught delens of Italian Militant Art Criticism Abstract Giulio Carlo Argan et le surréalisme: une approche pas évidente Lors des rencontres "Studi sul Surrealismo" tenus à Salerne au début des années Soixante-dix, l'historien d'art Giulio Carlo Argan, qui allait peu après entrer en politique, présentait une communication intitulée Il sublime subliminale di Max Ernst, artiste qu'il définissait comme « le plus surréaliste des surréalistes ». C'est bien dans les années 1970 qu'Argan avait commencé à s'intéresser et à écrire sur un certain nombre de peintres et de photographes qui ont fait partie du mouvement de Breton, ou qui y ont participé pendant une brève période. C'est le cas, par exemple, de Joan Miró, de Man Ray et d'Ernst lui-même. Toutefois, le jugement sur le mouvement et sur ses protagonistes n'avait pas été toujours positif, surtout au cours des décennies précédentes. En effet, à plusieurs reprises, pendant les années 1950 et 1960, il avait attaqué le surréalisme comme un mouvement « stérile et dépassé » et ses revendications comme des « immoralismes surréalistes », définissant l'inconscient exhibé par le surréalisme comme « inconscient de classe : l'autre face de la lucidité rationnelle, de l'efficacité, de la clarté de vision du ''manager'' bourgeois ». À cette époque il ''sauvait'' seulement la période surréaliste de Picasso. Une des questions auxquelles notre communication veut répondre est : quelle est la raison de ce changement de jugement ? Et surtout : ce changement a-t-il été réellement sincère ? Cette proposition veut aussi analyser les différents passages, et surtout approfondir la lecture que fait Argan de certains artistes surréalistes, afin de comprendre les raisons de ce que l'on pourrait définir comme une approche contradictoire à l'égard du mouvement bretonien.
On the Verge of the Absurd: Bruno Munari, Dada, and Surrealism in Interwar Italy
As perhaps the most prominent Italian designer of the twentieth century, Bruno Munari also remains its most elusive and ineffable. Nearly every piece of writing on his career includes passing nods to Dada and Surrealism: aesthetic (and anti-aesthetic) precedents casually appended to the more obvious influences of Constructivism and Concretism upon his prodigious body of work. Munari’s seemingly inexorable progression toward graphic and industrial design – the practices on which he left his most enduring mark – passed through various, successive stages, inflected in turn by Futurism and the Bauhaus, Abstraction-Création and Arte Programmata, among other movements and tendencies. These affinities are well documented in scholarship. The nature of Munari’s rapport with Surrealism and Dada, however, has yet to receive any sustained examination – something this essay aims to redress, considering along the way not simply Munari’s absorption of European currents, but the fraught and fitful reception of Dada and Surrealism in Italy at large.