Book Description
The volume traces a panorama, one never before observed, of the last century of Italian art within a "global" framework, choosing, that is, the most distanced and wide-ranging perspective in order to be the most all-inclusive outside Italy and outside Europe.

Furthermore, the historical line followed is also one of the first for Italian art to take account of the postmodern revolution and to follow every step of the alternating supremacies of modernity and antimodernity in the artistic research from 1900 to 2000.

It is therefore shown that Italian art sometimes presents itself as homogeneous with international avant-garde and neo-avant-garde movements, sometimes as dishomogeneous, recovering a specificity drawn from its own prestigious cultural past, with foundations distinct from its historical present.


About the Author
Sandra Pinto is the Curator of the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome, Italy

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Here are 100 works of art selected from the Italian National Gallery of Modern Art and from private collections that present a wide perspective on the development of modern Italian art. The sharp break from traditional art styles at the beginning of the twentieth century century manifested itself in all media, especially in paintings by Modigliani, Boccioni, and Balla. By the 1920s there was a continued flow of modernism in Italian arts including the works of de Chirico and Sironi that was diverted only by the Fascist regime. When Peggy Guggenheim arrived in Venice, Italian modernism was rekindled and its frontiers spread so rapidly that by the eighties "modern art" required a larger meaning to include startling new work by Francesco Clemente and Sandro Chia. Even the flexible idea of art, established by the Venice Biennale at the end of the century, has been breached by Italian artists now working in the new mediums offered by technology.

The force and range of modernism in Italy has never been more vibrant, and this book captures its origins and growth for over a century.