Image revelations in Bologna art of Seventies

Abstract

The alternative between ‘artwork’ and ‘behavior’, as a critical issue by Francesco Arcangeli at the Venice Biennale in 1972, is an important track on which contemporary artistic research continues today; however, there are many influences, convergences and exchange moments between the two lines. In the Seventies in Bologna, where the polarity had already been able to test during the exhibition held at the Civic Museum at the threshold of the decade Gennaio 70, different artists like Anna Valeria Borsari, Maurizio Osti, Piero Copertini and Piero Manai shared a ‘revealing’ of the picture, now declaring it as a trace of ‘behavior’ no as an element of ‘artwork’. In the essay we examine the poetics of the four artists and some of the most interesting solutions they developed in the Seventies, in an attempt to understand the reasons that generated them.