Italian Drawing of the 20th Century brings together works from the Ramo Collection, the only collection in the world exclusively dedicated to drawing in Italy during the 20th century, from the great masters to lesser-known figures. The collection--and this book--presents drawing in Italy as a fundamental part of 20th-century art history. Including a wide range of techniques on paper (from watercolor to collage, crayon to felt-tip pen), this volume presents drawing as the skeleton of 20th-century art because it represents the first visualization of an idea. As an essential early step in art making, drawing is an expressive means shared by artists in working in different mediums, opening up to realization in a wide range of art practices. Italian Drawing of the 20th Century presents a specific national history for this unique, wide-ranging medium of creative thought. Among the artists featured are Balla, Baruchello, Boccioni, Crippa, de Chirico, Depero, Fabro, Fontana, Kounellis, Licini, Manzoni, Melotti, Morandi, Munari, Penone, Pistoletto, Rama, Rosso, Rotella and Severini.
Following a historically chronological approach, and with a clear focus on the marked regional diversity characterising Italy, this volume analyses the impact of social, economic, cultural and political transformation on the lives of Italians. It assesses their living standards, their health and education, their working conditions and their leisure activities. The final part of the book examines contemporary Italian society in the light of the political and moral crisis of the early 1990s.
An introduction to 15th century Italian painting and the social history behind it, arguing that the two are interlinked and that the conditions of the time helped fashion distinctive elements in the painter's style.
"Through meticulous research, this book explores the Italian twentieth-century jewelry and goldsmithing landscape. This is the first time the topic is investigated in such a comprehensive manner, having previously only been dealt with limitedly to specific producers or production areas. Following the evolution of an art that is the result of millenary stratifications, this volume contains over three hundred images illustrating jewelry produced between 1900 and 1990. The chapters follow a chronological order and systematically look at the political and economic events influencing the fate of jewelry, as well as the fashion, the role of women, the artistic and architectural experiences, and the tastes of the time. Alongside the most prominent maisons feature less-known jewelers of doubtless creativity and artistic quality. Detailed biographies of each of the jewelers mentioned are included at the end of the volume"--Back cover.
This collection examines key aesthetic avant-garde art movements of the twentieth century and their relationships with revolutionary politics. The contributors distinguish aesthetic avant-gardes —whose artists aim to transform society and the ways of sensing the world through political means—from the artistic avant-gardes, which focus on transforming representation. Following the work of philosophers such as Friedrich Schiller and Jacques Rancière, the contributors argue that the aesthetic is inherently political and that aesthetic avant-garde art is essential for political revolution. In addition to analyzing Russian constructivsm, surrealism, and Situationist International, the contributors examine Italian futurism's model of integrating art with politics and life, the murals of revolutionary Mexico and Nicaragua, 1960s American art, and the Slovenian art collective NSK's construction of a fictional political state in the 1990s. Aesthetic Revolutions and Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde Movements traces the common foundations and goals shared by these disparate arts communities and shows how their art worked towards effecting political and social change. Contributors. John E. Bowlt, Sascha Bru, David Craven, Aleš Erjavec, Tyrus Miller, Raymond Spiteri, Miško Šuvakovic
The new, updated edition of the Skira best-seller on twentieth-century art. This handy manual is for those who wish to understand what art was in the last century and what it represents today. The book, whose structure is essential and synthetic, aims to divulge the pleasure of art to those who have never delved beyond its surface, and above all to describe how it has become spectacle and performance in recent years. Following an analysis of the theories and poetics that tempestuously traversed the historical avant-gardes and the neo-avant-gardes of the twentieth century and contributed to their extraordinary vitality, the author focuses on and explains the principal artistic phenomena that, starting in 1980, marked the period defined as post-modern, which was characterised by performance and a system of economic-financial art. The last chapter describes the arrival of postmodern up to its possible decline, marked by the social events of 2007 that, by abandoning the special effects of immateriality, has headed in a direction that is more tangible, worldly and concrete.