“charting a time of dynamic, experimental, and original sculpture, when artists redefined the meaning, purpose, and manifestation of their art”

Italian postwar sculpture is dynamic, experimental, and original. This book presents works created during the pivotal moment after the Second World War when Italian sculptors rejected the past and redefined the meaning, purpose, and manifestation of their art. As sculptors built new and extraordinary forms, concurrently, their country built a new and buoyant Italy.

In this moment of deconstruction, sculpture became an emblem of reconstruction. Amidst wreckage, sculptors followed new experimental paths of development, which included abstraction, figuration, and materiality. The sculptures presented in this catalogue demonstrate the antagonism and dialogue between the classic and the modern; the figurative and the abstract; traditional media and radical experiments. Through these active tensions, Italian postwar sculpture gave birth to a new visual language, which was cemented and encouraged by the wealth and inventive vitality of burgeoning Italy. With creation and the modern maintaining a key central role in society, the result was one of the most fruitful, and surprisingly under appreciated, moments in the history of contemporary art.

Edited by Carolyn H. Miner
Essay by Francesca Pola

Artists: Andrea Cascella, Pietro Consagra, Lucio Fontana, Marino Marini, Umberto Mastroianni, Fausto Melotti, Eduardo Paolozzi, Arnaldo Pomodoro, Francesco Somaini, and Alberto Viani