Luca Massimo Barbero

The story of a seminal experience on the international art scene in the 1960s. In the postwar period characterized by wide-ranging experimentation involving major artists and international exchanges, Azimut/h played a key cultural and expressive role. Founded in 1959 with slightly different names by Piero Manzoni and Enrico Castellani, the gallery (Azimut) and the magazine (Azimuth) forged a new concept of aesthetics. In doing so, they were inspired by intense relationships developed with some of the leading figures exploring the language and theory of Italian and international art at the time. This book focuses on the Italian artists of that generation and the European and American reach of their work.

“This exhibition and this publication in particular bring together and reinterpret the experiences
of Azimut/h and the research of the protagonists that worked in its orbit, but they go beyond this.
Rather than focus on these, tucking them safely into yet another study, they adopt a perspective
that, alongside an analytical view of the material, explodes Azimut/h. Starting with an exhibition
that is tightly and philologically curated, each work, as if written in hypertext, is opened up to reveal
its connections and evocations, identified above all in this publication, which is not simply a compendium
but a key to the work on view.[…]
To complete these iconographic and textual analyses a series of sources are reproduced in their entirety
here, crucial for reconstructing the history of Azimut/h: the two issues of the review Azimuth, the only
catalogue ever printed by the gallery (Manzoni’s exhibition of Lines), alongside Azimut invitations and
posters, as well as other publications of the period, reviews in particular, that make up the context
of its genesis and relations.”
luca massimo barbero
In a postwar period marked by great experimentation, great masters and international comparison, the
central cultural and expressive place of Azimut emerges, an art gallery and magazine founded in 1959 by
Piero Manzoni and Enrico Castellani. Differentiated by their spelling, Azimut (the gallery) and “Azimuth” (the magazine) formalised a new aesthetic conception favoured also by the intense relationship
developed with some of the leading figures in Italian and international linguistic and theoretical studies
of those years.
The book is dedicated to the Italian leaders of this generation and to the European and American internationalism
of this experience, and consists of five essays written respectively by: Luca Massimo Barbero,
Azimut/h. Continuity and Newness, Francesca Pola, The constellation of “the new artistic conception”
Azimut/h epicenter of the european neo-avantgard, Antoon Melissen, Transforming Reality
Azimut/h: between radical abstraction and the poetics of the object, Federico Sardella, Enrico Castellani
before and after Azimut/h and Flaminio Gualdoni, Artist’s shit Manzoni and after Manzoni.
The magazines that typified the art scene of those years are also published in their entirety for the first
time in a section of more than 300 pages: L’esperienza moderna 3-4, Il gesto
3, Internationale situationniste
2,
Panderma
4, Art Actuel international 14, Nota
4, Zero
3, Arte programmata 1962, Almanacco Letterario
Bompiani 1962 and Nul o 2
.… (mais)