Page 40 - Studio International - October 1970

Two Italian

kinetic groups

Caroline Tisdall

`The experience of the groups, founded at a of the 'informale), and the consequent barrier them with only half an ideological leg to stand
time when people were 50 years behind what set up between work and viewer. Predecessors on, and rendered their group stand anachro-
was happening, was indispensable. We con- were Munari, Mari, Fontana, Manzoni and nistic.
tinued until we found that we were working Castellani. Their earliest and liveliest mani- Of the Group T members still active, Boriani
in a way that had absolutely nothing to do festations were intended to deflate the pom- has refused to exhibit for two years, apart
with reality. Now we must decide how to posity of art institutions: Massironi submitted from the setting up of a fine illusion room at
continue. The environments on which we a piece of corrugated board to the San this year's Venice Biennale; De Vecchi is
worked from 1963 were just a stage in a line Fedele painting competition, achieving the involved with industrial design, and still
of research. Now the environment too has infuriated withdrawal of judge and jury; De creates environments based on illusionistic
become just another sort of gallery space, a Vecchi made sculpture to be kicked; Group light structure; whilst Colombo is experiment-
fashion, and, like kinetics, has ceased to have N's bread exhibition was an exposure of the ing with television films, using wave fre-
any sort of relevance. We must return to an arrogant verbosity of art criticism. In January quency interference accompanied by elec-
activity related to reality, with the social- 1960 the future members of Group T staged tronic noise to disrupt and transform set
political involvement this inevitably entails. an exhibition, Miriorama I, on the theme of images. In Padua, Biasi is exploring the possi-
The artist today certainly has the capacity for variation, using the 'materials of reality'. On bilities of computer graphics, and Massironi
understanding, but is incapable of finding a show were a transparent plastic tube contain- is pursuing the study of the psychology of art
way of getting it across.' Davide Boriani, ing dry ice (the smoke of which was agitated that has absorbed him increasingly since 1966.
Venice, 1970. by a fan— an idea formulated by Boccioni),
Ten years have passed since the formation of plastic transformed and destroyed on a hot-
the two main kinetic groups in Italy—Group plate, copper heated to display its changing
T in Milan and Group N in Padua. Although surface colour patterns, and inflatables.
their intensive group activity was short-lived, This theme of mutation was pursued with the
its effect on art in Italy was as catalystic as programmed objects produced by the groups,
anything since Futurism. In fact, their initial as in 'Arte Programmata' (T, N, Munari and
idealistic, and at times juvenile, antagonism Mari) organized by Munari for Olivetti in
towards society in general and the galleries 1962, and seen in London at the Royal
and museums in particular, their manifestoes, College in 1964.
and the emphasis placed on activity as Both groups were involved in the organiza-
opposed to end product, have obvious tion of the Nouvelle Tendance in Zagreb, and
parallels in the futurist events organized by participated in all three of its exhibitions
Marinetti, Russolo and Depero. from 1963-65. As is clear from Biasi's com-
Group T, consisting of Boriani, Colombo, De ments below, self-interest gradually engulfed
Vecchi, Anceschi and Varisco, described their the co-operative internationalism of the
concept of reality as a continual progression of Zagreb activities, and by 1965 the groups
phenomena perceived in their variations. Its themselves were splitting up. Objects like
aim was to replace the public's idea of static Boriani's 'Magnetic Surface' and 'P.H. Scope',
reality with this concept of continual change. Colombo's 'Fluid Structuralisation', De
Group N—Biasi, Massironi, Landi, Costa and Vecchi's `U.R.M.N.T.', Group N's 'Dynamic
Chiggio —announced themselves as experi- Vision' and Biasi's 'Cinerecticle' had been
mentalists exploiting a programme of collec- snapped up by a hungry market, multiple
tive practical and theoretical research, and sales were extensive but in expensive limited
set up a shop, as opposed to a gallery, to sell editions, and the environments on which
their products. Kinetic and optical means they had been working since 1963, using
were chosen, not as an end in themselves, but artificial light, transformable light lines, vib-
as a then logical antidote to the myths of art rating frames etc., had become viable
they objected to (Italy was then in the throes gallery space. This, they felt, eventually left