The exhibition project proposes to investigate, for the first time in such an organic way, the development of Pop Art and the Beat Generation in Italy: a selection of large-format works, together with documents, music and original videos will allow visitors to the exhibition to immerse themselves in a journey summarised by the slogan 'free to dream', which corresponds well to the underlying sentiment of that particular historical period between 1960 and 1979.
Endorsing the widely held view that the 1910s and 1960s were, in fact, the two pivotal decades for the arts in Italy, POP/BEAT - Italy 1960-1979 is thus configured as a multidisciplinary project that proposes an interconnection between all forms of expression, from painting to sculpture, from video to photography, from music to literature, from sociality to costume, never investigated to this extent until now.
While in the United States, from the late 1940s, the Beat Generation of Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gregory Corso, William S. Burroughs and many others asserted itself, more than a decade before the development of Pop Art led by Andy Warhol, in Italy, between 1962 and 1965, we witnessed a sort of contemporary Pop consciousness-raising in the arts, literature and music, which interpreted the social, political and cultural changes of the period and the demands coming from the streets, universities and factories.
The exhibition aims to highlight the uniqueness of Italian Pop Art and its absolute stature in Europe, as well as the substantial differences and autonomy of Italian artists compared to their American counterparts. If the latter were undeniably oriented towards the evidence of the consumer products of mass society amplified by advertising, on the contrary, the former took their cue from nature, from historiographic and social references, such as the movementist and political ones at the turn of the Sixties, and looked with interest to Futurism, the first Historical Avant-garde of the 20th century.
Within the exhibition, the Pop itinerary will start with some of the precursors of this sensibility such as Enrico Baj, Gianni Bertini, Pino Pascali, Michelangelo Pistoletto and Mimmo Rotella, highlighting then, also in the exhibition layout, the welding between the experiences of the Gruppo di Piazza del Popolo in Rome, with Mario Schifano as the authentic protagonist, and those of the artists bordering the Galleria Marconi in Milan. The exhibition will thus reconstruct an overall geography of the protagonists of Pop Art, unified and national in scope: Milan and Rome, therefore, but also Turin, Bologna, Florence and Naples.
At the same time, the exhibition will feature some of the emergences of the Italian Beat world that, although it developed late compared to the novelties in painting, experienced a significant diffusion starting from the early 1970s: a literature, the Beat one, that also started 'from the bottom', often in the most disadvantaged and peripheral areas of Italy, far from the gilded capitals of the publishing houses towards which its interpreters often advanced criticism and claims.
On the subject of Beat literature, authors such as Aldo Piromalli, Gianni Milano, Andrea d'Anna, Gianni De Martino, Pietro Tartamella, Eros Alesi, Vincenzo Parrella - 'stray lambs fucked angels' (according to Gianni De Martino's definition, 1967) - as well as the militant artistic vicissitudes of the Sicilian Antigroup led by the charismatic figure of Nat Scammacca, certainly less investigated to date than the activity of the Gruppo 63 of Umberto Eco, Luigi Nono, Elio Pagliarani and Edoardo Sanguineti.
The tour will end with video projections and direct testimonies of the protagonists of the collectivist experiences of the 1974-1976 Feste al Parco Lambro in Milan and the 1979 Castelporziano Poetry Festival.
An extensive documentary section, with cyclostats, posters, writings, books and photographs of the period, will be on display in the exhibition.
A number of special events will be dedicated to Pop/Beat music, as well as to the most heartfelt themes of the time: concerts, readings, screenings of documentaries and video interviews, lectures and debates will enliven the meeting spaces of the city of Vicenza and the exhibition space itself.
Frittelli arte contemporanea has contributed with the loan of two works by Gianni Bertini: Stilmec, 1967 and La double himera, 1965.
POP/BEAT - Italy 1960-1979
Curated by Roberto Floreani
2 March - 28 July 2024
Basilica Palladiana, Vicenza
Wednesday to Friday: 10 a.m. - 6 p.m.
Saturday and Sunday: 10 a.m. - 7.30 p.m.
Mondays and Tuesdays closed