DOCUMENTI D'ARTE D'OGGI 1956 / 57
[MAC] Movimento Arte Concreta / Groupe Espace
[MAC] Movimento Arte Concreta / Groupe Espace: DOCUMENTI D'ARTE D'OGGI 1956 / 57 [Raccolti a Cura del MAC/Espace]. New York: George Wittenborn Inc., 1957. First edition. Text in Italian. Folio. Thick perfect bound lithogrraphic wrappers by Luigi Veronesi. [158] pp. Color & black and white original Lithographs, Serigraphs, Montages, tipped-in Plates and Reproductions. Multiple paper stocks and printing methods throughout. A collection of writings and works by members of the Italian non-figurative art groups Movimento Arte Concreta (MAC) and Gruppo Espace. Page edges lightly sunned and trace of wear to spine joints, otherwise a fine, fresh copy.
9 x 12.75 [23 x 32 cm] folio printed in Italy using a wide variety of processes and paper stocks. Documenti d'Arte d'Oggi was an ongoing project of the Concrete Art Movement (Movimento arte concreta) published in four volumes between 1954 to 1958. These publications consisted of original lithographs, silkscreens, and woodcuts and came out in 1954, 1955-56, 1956-57, and 1958. Now extremely rare, they must have been produced in very small editions, because there is so much handwork in the production, with everything printed on different kinds and weights of paper, and all kinds of collaged elements added. Gianni Monnet in particular was very interested in adding texture by sticking on bits of sandpaper and the like. One of his lithographs has, in addition to various hand-punched holes, a piece of scrumpled newspaper collaged on the surface, and impressions on the surface caused by small oblongs of sandpaper and corrugated board fixed to the facing page.
When you hear people saying “they sure don’t make them like this anymore,” they are talking about this collection.
Features reproductions of works of Aagaard Andersen, Enrico Baj, Renato Barisani, Vinicio Berti, Enrico Bordoni, Angelo Bozzola, Bruno Brunetti, Giuseppe Capogrossi, Carolrama [Carol Rama], Joe C. Colombo, Michelangelo Conte, Sergio Dangelo, Gillo Dorfles, Lucio Fontana, Vincenza Frunzo, Albino Galvano, Proferio Grossi, Paolalevi-Montalcini, Galliano Mazzon, Franco Meneguzzo, Gianni Monnet, Alvaro Monnini, Alberto Moretti, Bruno Munari, Gualtiero Nativi, Mario Nigro, Gastone Novelli, Mario Nuti, Sandro Pessina, Vivaldo Poli, Arnoldo Pomodoro, Gio Pomodoro, Mario Radice, Mauro Reggiani, Regina [Regina Cassolo Bracchi], Manlio Rho, Emilio Scanavino, Atanasia Soldati, Francesco Somaini, Tito B. Varisco, Luigi Veronesi & Simonetta Vigevani-Jung.
Features writings by Giovanni Acquaviva, Nanni Balestrini, Renato Birolli, Leôn Degand, Nino Di Salvatore, Gillo Dorfles, Albino Galvano, Giuseppe Guglielmini, Giorgio Kaiserlin, Galliano Mazzon, Gianni Monnet, Alberto Oggero, Franco Passoni, Achille Perilli, Antonio Radaelli, Mario Radice, Carlo L. Ragghianti, Renato Righetti, Alfredo Rizzardi, Roberto Sanesi, Edoardo Sanguineti, Piero Santi, Antonino Tullier, and Marco Valsecchi.
Concrete Art has been applied to various abstract art movements after the term was coined by Theo van Doesburg in his 1930 Manifesto of Concrete Art. Van Doesburg's insistence that art should be formed from the "concrete" elements of form and colour without reference to the physical world was championed by the Swiss artist Max Bill, a former student of Josef Albers and Wassily Kandinsky at the Bauhaus. In the late 1940s and the 1950s two groups influenced by Bill flourished in France and Italy: Groupe Espace and MAC, the Movimento Arte Concreta. The two groups exhibited in combination in Italy as Gruppo Espace.
MAC was formed in 1948 by four Italian artists: Atanasio Soldati, Gillo Dorfles, Bruno Munari, and Gianni Monnet. It disbanded in 1958, following the premature death of Gianni Monnet at the age of 46. Besides collective exhibitions, the members of MAC produced four remarkable collections of art and writing entitled Documenti d'arte d'oggi. A list of members of Gruppo MAC/Espace in the 1956-1957 volume lists 74 names and addresses. At that time there was a governing committee of six: Gillo Dorfles, Gianni Monnet (Secretary), Bruno Munari, Enrico Prampolini, Mauro Reggiani (President), and Vittoriano Viganó. The majority are listed as painters or sculptors, but there are also plenty of architects and engineers.
Several members of MAC achieved fame as industrial and interior designers, including Joe Colombo (Cesare Colombo, 1930-1971), whose Total Furnishing Unit, unveiled at the Museum of Modern Art in New York the year after his death, was a complete "living-machine" comprising kitchen, wardrobe, bathroom and bedroom on just 28 square metres. All the listed members are Italian, but the same page also gives the committee members for Espace in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Sweden, and England.
The English group included the architect Wells Coates and the painter Victor Pasmore; the French, André Bloc, Sonia Delaunay, and Edgard Pillet; the Swiss, Alfred Roth, Max Bill, and Richard Paul Lohse; the Swedish, Eric Olson and Olle Baertling. So there was certainly an international dimension to this Italian art movement, which even had a toehold in the USA through the Wittenborn Gallery, which represented MAC artists such as Gillo Dorfles; George Wittenborn also gave limited American distribution to Documenti d'arte d'oggi. [Neil Philip] [xlist_2018]