Luciano Fabro

Italian artist Luciano Fabro was one of the defining pioneers of the postwar Italian movement of Arte Povera, working across diverse media including sculpture and conceptual art. Fabro’s usage of unconventional materials and a revolutionary understanding of sculptural form underscored his significance as a landmark in postwar Italian art; he was the first member of Arte Povera to be the subject of a major United States retrospective at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1992.

Luciano Fabro’s dynamic body of work finds its basis in the artist’s

Among the most important series of works in the artist’s career is the Italie series—begun in 1968 along with the May 68 protests throughout Europe—in which the artist utilizes a wide range of materials from road maps, metals, glass, wood, and more to construct the iconic form of Italy’s “boot,” an interrogation of the nation-state’s national identity and the role of iconography in the construction of this identity. This exploration of the relationship between form and content is a linchpin for our understanding of the artist’s eclectic sculptural oeuvre as he tinkers with the material or scale of immediately recognizable forms to explore the limits of their socially accepted symbolic function.

Testament to the importance of his singular sculptural vision, Fabro has exhibited in solo exhibitions at international institutions such as the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; the Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht; the Tate, London; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others. His sculptures are also collected by museums such as Glenstone, Potomac, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Warehouse, Dallas, and the Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo.