Beyond Transavantgarde. Art in Italy in the 1980s. Stefano Perrini Executive Master in Art Market Studies, University of Zurich. Poststrasse 9, CH 8808, Pfäffikon, SZ +4179 575 76 89 [email protected] April 2015 Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Julia Gelshorn Director of Studies: Dr. Nicolas Galley Statement of authorship I hereby certify that this master thesis has been composed by myself, and describes my own work, unless otherwise acknowledged in the text. All references and verbatim extracts have been quoted, and all sources of information have been specifically acknowledged. This master thesis has not been accepted in any previous application for a degree. Pfäffikon SZ, 30.04.2015 Stefano Perrini We could say that every period has its own postmodernism, just as every period would have its own mannerism (and, in fact, I wonder if postmodernism is not the modern name for mannerism as metahistorical category). […] The past conditions us, harries us, blackmails us. The historic avant-garde (but here I would also consider avant-garde a metahistorical category) tries to settle scores with the past. […] The avant-garde destroys, defaces the past […]. But the moment comes when the avant-garde (the modern) can go no further, because it has produced a metalanguage that speaks of its impossible texts (conceptual art). The postmodern reply to the modern consists of recognizing that the past, since it cannot really be destroyed, because its destruction leads to silence, must be revisited: but with irony, not innocently. I think of the postmodern attitude as that of a man who loves a very cultivated woman and knows he cannot say to her, “I love you madly,” because he knows that she knows (and that she knows that he knows) that these words have already been written by Barbara Cartland. Still, there is a solution. He can say, “As Barbara Cartland would put it, I love you madly.” At this point, having avoided false innocence, having said clearly that it is no longer possible to speak innocently, he will nevertheless have said what he wanted to say to the woman: that he loves her, but he loves her in an age of lost innocence. If the woman goes along with this, she will have received a declaration of love all the same. Neither of the two speakers will feel innocent, both will have accepted the challenge of the past, of the already said, which cannot be eliminated; both will consciously and with pleasure play the game of irony… But both will have succeeded, once again, in speaking of love.1 Umberto Eco 1 The Name of the Rose; New York, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1984, New edition 2014, p. 570–571. 2 Table of Contents 1. Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 5 1.1 Periodization .............................................................................................................. 7 1.2 From the Years of Lead to a New Political Context ................................................... 9 1.3 Postmodernism ....................................................................................................... 18 1.4 The International Scene........................................................................................... 20 1.5 Made in Italy ............................................................................................................ 23 2. Transavantgarde ............................................................................................................ 25 2.1 Sandro Chia .............................................................................................................. 34 2.2 Francesco Clemente ................................................................................................ 39 2.3 Enzo Cucchi .............................................................................................................. 47 2.4 Nicola De Maria ....................................................................................................... 53 2.5 Mimmo Paladino ..................................................................................................... 56 3. Nuovi-nuovi .................................................................................................................... 60 3.1 Luigi Ontani .............................................................................................................. 68 3.2 Salvo ........................................................................................................................ 81 3.3 Figurative Artists ...................................................................................................... 94 3.3.1 Marcello Jori .............................................................................................. 99 3.3.2 Aldo Spoldi .............................................................................................. 109 3.4 Non-figurative Artists ............................................................................................ 113 3.4.1 Luciano Bartolini ..................................................................................... 116 3.4.2 Enzo Esposito .......................................................................................... 127 3.5 Towards the Third Dimension ............................................................................... 135 4. Anachronists ................................................................................................................ 139 5. Other Groups ............................................................................................................... 146 5.1 Magico Primario .................................................................................................... 146 5.2 Officina San Lorenzo .............................................................................................. 150 5.3 Astrazione Povera .................................................................................................. 163 5.4 New Futurism ........................................................................................................ 166 6. Market Analysis ............................................................................................................ 168 3 Bibliography ......................................................................................................................... 173 List of Illustration Sources……………………………………………………………………………………………….191 4 1. Introduction Art history is simplified. It is inevitable: too many artists during too many centuries; some of them are left behind, in some cases to be rediscovered later, thanks to the good work of some specialized academic or passionate connoisseur. After less than forty years, the process of simplification has already been applied to the artistic situation in Italy during the 1980s. The common way to describe what happened in Italy is the following: in 1979 art critic Achille Bonito Oliva (1939) gathered a group of young artists, theorizing the movement called Transavantgarde (“Transavanguardia” in Italian), which, as a reaction to Arte Povera (and to Conceptual art in general), rediscovered the pleasure of painting and dominated the scene for at least ten years after their participation in the 1980 Venice Biennale. This is more or less the impression one has when consulting general, unspecialized sources. Actually, it is more or less the version that Bonito Oliva managed to impose. The present work aims at restoring, at least partially, the complexity of what happened in Italy in that decade. It will be discovered that in Italy the return to painting was not determined by the artists belonging to Transavantgarde, but it happened some years earlier, thanks to three important forerunners: Luigi Ontani (1943), Salvo (1947) and Carlo Maria Mariani (1931). These artists developed from their experiences with Arte Povera and Conceptual art. Their decision to return to painting therefore cannot really be seen as a reaction to this kind of art, but rather its natural evolution. With a closer look, Transavantgarde was something artificial, created by Bonito Oliva with the market in mind. He restricted the membership only to five artists; thanks to his indubitable keenness, he imposed them and the Transavanguardia brand on the international scene. The operation worked very well in the short term, but it showed its side effects in the long term. The major problem was that the five artists selected by Bonito Oliva were not 5 necessarily the best representatives Italy could offer at the time. In addition, the creation of an exclusive club denied the possibility of renewing and stimulating new talents and ideas. Bonito Oliva was probably aware of the issues and, after the initial saturation strategy, he has vainly tried to stick the Transavantgarde label on everything he came into contact with.2 As a final result, while the Transavantgarde group had no real evolution, some other Italian artists, who were even more interesting, did not have an opportunity to be recognized out of Italy, where such a brand had become a synonym for Italian art in the 1980s. Thus, the international consideration for the Transavantgard artists has probably decreased with time, but different gems produced in Italy in the decade have not been discovered yet. Actually, there were many other artistic groups in Italy, mostly put together by critics, and a real religion war. As noted by curator Jean-Christophe Ammann (1939) in Italy typically “the artists ‘serve’ the critics