Luciano Fabro

Galerie Micheline Szwajcer, Brussels

Private Collection, New York

Bologna, Galleria Enrico Astuni, Viva l’Italia, October 2009 – February 2010, illustrated in colour (online press release) (edition no. unknown)

Brussels, Galerie Micheline Szwajcer, Petals on the Wind,  September – October 2014 

Gaetano Grillo, ‘C’è un’Italia rovesciata che…c’è un “sistema dell’arte” che…c’è una generazione di artisti-docenti che…’, in: Academy of Fine Arts, No. 5, 2010, p. 3, illustrated in colour (edition no. unknown)

Exh. Cat., Pistoia, Palazzo Fabroni, Fabroniopera, Luciano Fabro, December 1994 – February 1995, pp. 30-31 and 40, illustrated (edition no. unknown)

Colour: The colours in the catalogue are fairly accurate, although the green is slightly brighter and more vibrant in the original Condition: This work is in very good condition. Close inspection reveals a few minor scratches to the metal pole. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultra-violet light,
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“Collectively the Italia works draw attention to the rootedness of our lives, to the land we inhabit. All our experiences and those of people in history, our culture, our architecture, arise from an encounter between ourselves and the land” (Frances Morris, ‘Luciano Fabro: In Virtue of References’, in: Exh. Cat., London, Tate, Luciano Fabro, 1997, p. 15)

An immediately recognisable and iconographic image, the Italian peninsula has become a defining characteristic in the work of Luciano Fabro. An Italian post-war artist associated with the Arte Povera movement, Fabro’s oeuvre encapsulates a diversity of media, which are used to explore themes of past and present through a poetic, visual intelligence and intuition. Among the most familiar and highly regarded of the artist’s works are the Italie (Italys) which were executed in a variety of materials ranging from brass to animal fur, and from lead to glass. Created and re-created from 1968 until a few years before the artist’s death in 2007, the Italie were installed in varying spatial positions and locations, allowing them to serve as material evocations of the multivalent and multifaceted significations of the artist’s homeland. Attesting to the importance of this series, another edition of the present work, Italia All’Asta, can be found in the collection of the Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea in Rivoli.

Monumental in height and form, Italia All’Asta Verde (1994) depicts two images of Italy, one of them upright and the other facing the opposite direction, flipped upside down. The two islands of Sardinia and Sicily are piled on top of the mainland, uniting all three into one landmass. These two iron silhouettes, painted a rich green, represent a cohesion between North and South. As such, this fragmentary map becomes a symbol not only of a collective ideal of nationhood, but also of a place that signifies humanity’s connection to its roots, culture, and evolution. As the artist himself commented, “Italy is an image for whoever feels in some way bound to it, whose shape is seen as a graphic of ideas” (Luciano Fabro, ‘Italia’, in: Exh. Cat., Essen, Museum Folkwang; and Rotterdam, Boymans van Beuningen, Luciano Fabro: Vademecum, 1981, p. 12).

Highly influenced by Lucio Fontana’s 1958 exhibition at the Venice Biennale, Fabro moved to Milan. Here he met post-war avant-gardists, such as Giulio Paolini, Jannis Kounellis and Pino Pascali. Inspired by their radical rejection of traditional artistic mediums, he became involved in the Arte Povera movement of the late 1960s and incorporated both everyday materials, as well as more traditional mediums, such as molten glass, marble, and silk in his work. This unique combination of ‘high’ and ‘low’ materials is a defining feature of his Italie series and explicitly demonstrates Fabro’s desire to enrich the everyday and the mundane rather than to merely replicate or appropriate it. As the artist explained: “I want to do something very complex, but presented in a simple way. Within this simplicity you must be aware of the complexity” (Luciano Fabro cited in: Exh. Cat., London, Marian Goodman Gallery, Luciano Fabro, 2015, online).

As Frances Morris, now Head of Collections at Tate Modern, wrote about the series “collectively the Italia works draw attention to the rootedness of our lives, to the land we inhabit. All our experiences and those of people in history, our culture, our architecture, arise from an encounter between ourselves and the land” (Frances Morris, ‘Luciano Fabro: In Virtue of References’, in: Exh. Cat., London, Tate, Luciano Fabro, 1997, p. 15). In fact the Italie can be seen as entities that unite the entirety of Fabro’s artistic output, having consistently re-appeared throughout his oeuvre, they form landmarks that map out his illustrious career.