Figurality of painting. Bologna beyond Informal Art

Abstract

Between 1959 and 1962 Italian painting made a gradual transition from the materialism of the Informal to new forms of figuration full of organicist and surrealist moods. Bologna is undoubtedly one of the cities that best represents this turning point: the research conducted between the late Fifties and early Sixties by Vasco Bendini, Pirro Cuniberti, Luciano De Vita, Giuseppe Ferrari, Mario Nanni, Leone Pancaldi, Concetto Pozzati and Sergio Vacchi confirms this. Their work is included in important national exhibitions such as Possibilità di relazione (Rome, 1960), Nuove prospettive della pittura italiana (Bologna, 1962), Alternative attuali (L'Aquila, 1962) or the 1964 Venice Biennale and is followed and supported by many important Italian critics such as Francesco Arcangeli, Renato Barilli, Maurizio Calvesi, Enrico Crispolti and Andrea Emiliani. This essay aims to outline the essential features of the artistic situation in Bologna at the end of the Fifties and to focus on the stylistic peculiarities of the individual authors with the support of critical voices who promptly commented on them.