Luciano Fabro

Carla Lonzi, Milan
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 1980

Gubbio, V Biennale del Metallo, 1969
Roma, Parcheggio di Villa Borghese, Contemporanea, 1973
Turin, Galleria Christian Stein, Letture parallele III, Coreografia, 1975
Edinburgh, Fruitmarket Gallery, Luciano Fabro: Landscapes, 1987
Lyon-Villeurbanne, Le Nouveau Musée, Luciano Fabro, 1987
Barcelona, Fundació Joan Miró, Luciano Fabro, 1990
San Francisco, Museum of Modern Art, Luciano Fabro, 1992, no. 42, illustrated in colour
Venice, XLV Biennale Internazionale dell'Arte, 1993
Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou - Musée National d'Art Moderne, Luciano Fabro, 1996-97
Turin, Castello di Rivoli, Arte Povera in Collezione, 2000-01, p. 149, illustrated in colour
London, Tate Modern; Minneapolis, Walker Art Center; Los Angeles, The Museum of Contemporary Art; Washington, D.C., Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Zero to Infinity: Arte Povera 1962-1972, 2001-03, p. 226, no. 46, illustrated in colour
Turin, Castello di Rivoli (on temporary loan 1996-2006)

Exhibition Catalogue, Milan, Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea, Letture parallele IV, Luciano Fabro, 1980, p. 11
Umberto Allemandi, Ed., Luciano Fabro: Lavori 1963-1986, Turin 1987, p. 74, illustrated
Exhibition Catalogue, Turin, Castello di Rivoli, Luciano Fabro, 1989, p. 124, pl. 126, illustrated
Exhibition Catalogue, Luzern, Kunstmuseum, Luciano Fabro. Die Zeit: Werke 1963-1991, 1991
Maïten Bouisset, Arte Povera, Paris 1994
Exhibition Catalogue, Pistoia, Palazzo Fabroni, Fabroinopera Luciano Fabro, 1994-95, p. 168, illustrated

Lucio Fabro is one of the most pre-eminent members of the Arte Povera group which re-invented sculptural forms in the late 1960s with their abandonment of traditional sculptural materials in favour of found natural ones. Neither a minimalist nor a conceptual artist, he moves freely between the use of simple, cheap materials and the finest traditional ones, trying to find a new unity between the many levels of nature and culture which surrounds us.
Begun in 1968 and perpetuated by the artist at various junctures over the next decade, the Italie sculptures form collectively the most important series in the artist’s production. The first sculptures made in the shape of the outline of Italy appeared in 1968 and subsequently each Italia marked a significant and distinctive development in Fabro’s ongoing questioning and exploration of conventional attitudes towards the object by using the map of Italy in a variety of new and surprising ways.
Fabro explains why he adopted the geographical outline of Italy as his template: ‘’ The form of Italy is static, immobile, I measure the mobility of my hands on something still. The Italie are like an album of sketches, a memo, I continue to make it over the years: if I study something new I sketch it in an Italia’ (Luciano Fabro, Letture Parallele III, Milan 1980)
The boot-shape of Italy is thus transformed by the artist through the use of different media and the form that each Italia takes is largely dependent on the material that the Fabro used to make the work. ‘’Form is contemporaneous’’ he explained, ‘’it is of the same time as its creator. Iconography comes from behind, it is the impulse which drives its creator and is the impulse which the creator hurls back. However much it may appear to the contrary, my Italie are liked by a very slender thread to iconography: also because the image of Italy is inferred, graphic. This is the reason for choosing a refraction of the form moving towards infinity. Italy is an image for whoever feels in some way bound to it, whose shape is seen as graphic of ideas. But for me the form remains the transmigration of the material.

(Luciano Fabro, in‘’Vademecum’’Rotterdam, 1981).
In the present work, the silhouette of the famous boot-shape peninsula which Italy is frequently compared to, has deliberately been shaped into a distinct form we can instantly recognise. By sculpting elegantly curled borders and filling the interior with a detailed cut-out road map, Fabro created a ragged rolled up frame which interestingly contrasts with the clearly defined network of internal borders of the Italian provinces.  Placed within its borders and constructed in the same way, the Italian islands of Sicily and Sardinia are screwed into the front side of the sculpture. Fabro’s aim with his Italie was also to encourage the viewer to move beyond the map’s iconography and its provocation of such associations towards a wider consideration of the purely formal aspects of the outline of the country: ‘’Remaking’’ Italy in different media also means reflecting on its history, on its social structures, on its contradictions. Italia Carta Stradale could thus be seen as a reference to the internal migrations of the county’s population from the South to the North or even referring to the Sicilian mafia moving up North.
Executed in 1969, the present Italia was immediately recognised as the centrepiece of his Italie series. Included in numerous international solo exhibitions of Fabro’s work from 1969 onwards, the piece figured recently in one of the most significant travelling exhibitions on Arte Povera titled: Zero to Infinity: Arte Povera 1962-1972, which  initiated in the Tate Modern in 2001. Over the last decade it has been on temporary loan at the Castello di Rivoli in Turin, the city that was once the birthplace of Arte Povera.