Rediscovered paths of Italian art in the VAF-Stiftung 1947 – 2010

Ideal continuation of the 2005 exhibition entitled "A century of Italian art", this exhibition event is divided into two distinct exhibitions. The first has as its predominant theme the rediscovery of those artists who from the fifties to the eighties were the protagonists of a rich exhibition and creative path, but who were partly forgotten by militant critics. With this exhibition we want to document the history of Italian art since the post-war period, paying attention first of all to the many groups formed in those years. These are experiences such as that of the "Nuclear Group", which included Franco Bemporad, Enrico Baj, Roberto Crippa, Gianni Dova and Piero Manzoni, among others, present on display with a "Untitled" of 1957. Or " Tempo 3 "(Arnaldo Esposto, Gianni Stirone, Riccardo Guarneri, Attilio Carreri) of" Experimental p. " (Francesco Guerrieri, Lia Drei).

The section documenting artistic trends such as concrete Rationalism, Constructivism and the Informal is particularly important. The richness and completeness of this part of the exhibition testify how many Italian artists have continued along the path of abstraction established in Italy during the 1930s; and, conversely, of how equally nourished was the group of artists who reacted to the rigor of abstraction in order to follow an expressiveness that is however not figurative but linked to energy and freedom of gesture. The informal is represented in the exhibition by works from the fifties and sixties by Toti Scialoja, Franco Meneguzzo and Gianni Bertini, by the markedly marked declination of Achille Perilli and above all by the polymaterial experiments of artists such as Gino Marotta, Edgardo Mannucci, Gino Marotta, Andrea Raccagni and of course Agenore Fabbri, extensively collected by Feierebend and to which a biennial exhibition-competition is dedicated, now in 2011 at the fifth edition, which the VAF-Stiftung organizes and promotes to take stock of the current positions of Italian art.

Fabbri's work in recent months has also been the subject of a retrospective curated by the Mart and exhibited at the Museo della Permanente in Milan. The works of artists engaged in an ironic or ferocious critique of society, such as Vettor Pisani and Gino de Dominicis ("A tomb for Claretta Petacci", 1974), Gianni Bertini ("Oil", 1965 and "Che" are from the end of the 1960s. sacramento ", 1968), Sergio Lombardo (" Charles De Gaulle ", 1961-62), Bruno Di Bello (" Berlin. Rudi Dutschke ", 1968), but also Paolo Baratella, Fernando De Filippi, Umberto Mariani or Giangiacomo Spadari. The second itinerary of the exhibition is dedicated to the youngest artists of the collection, exhibited in dialogue with the generation active in the eighties (Stefano Di Stasio, Carlo Maria Mariani, Aldo Mondino). The names were selected by the curators of the Mart with Volker W. Feierabend himself. These are preferences acquired by the collector during the long phases of research, selection and design of the editions of the Agenore Fabbri Prize.

The first section of this second path testifies the collector's propensity towards a figurative representation, with the works of Antonella Bersani, Davide La Rocca, Dacia Manto, Federico Pietrella, Cristiano Pintaldi and Nicola Verlato In a later chapter on abstraction, next to the cements worked by Arcangelo Sassolino, the light boxes by Pino Falcone, the sheets by Riccardo De Marchi and the writings on canvas by Sergio Fermariello stand out. The exhibition ends with a section entitled Ironic conceptualism. Issues familiar to the Mart public, who in recent years has had the opportunity to admire many works of international currents of conceptual art, here declined by Italian artists such as Andrea Facco, Corrado Bonomi, Carlo De Meo, Hubert Kostner, Enrico Iuliano, Antonio Riello.