Summer Solstice AD MCMLXIII : Luciano Fabro’s Early Works

Reconsidering the role of Luciano Fabro in and beyond the wide and almost undefined context of Arte Povera, it seems essential to understand how much his works maintain a peculiar position between the historical art tradition (from Renaissance to Avant- garde) and the radical innovation of means and methods typical of the experiences in environment and relational art from the 1960s. In 1978, republishing his first “manifesto” My certainty: my sense for my action… in his book Attaccapanni, Luciano Fabro put a short note at the beginning of that theoretical statement, in order to trace its almost “mythical” origin through an exemplary anecdote. The first words of this introductory note («Summer Solstice A.D. MCMLXIII. I worked the shift from one to nine p.m., at the circulating library of Villa Litta in Affori…») serve as title to the first chapter of Attaccapanni, which contains photographs of Fabro’s early works with explanatory captions written by the artist himself: Buco (Hole, 1963), Impronta (Imprint, 1964), Tondo e rettangolo (Circle and Rectangle, 1964), Tubo da mettere tra i fiori (Pipe to put among flowers, 1963), Ruota (Wheel, 1964), Struttura ortogonale tirata ai quattro vertici (Orthogonal structure subjected to tension at the four vertices, 1964), Mezzo specchiato mezzo trasparente (Half mirror – half transparent, 1965) and Tutto trasparente (All Transparent, 1965). Even before Mezzo specchiato mezzo trasparente and Tutto trasparente featured prominently in the group exhibition Arte Povera + Azioni povere (Amalfi, October 1968) and — the only first one — in Fabro’s solo shows at Galleria Notizie in Turin (Avanti, dietro, destra, sinistra, tautologie, February 1968 ) and at Galleria La Salita in Rome (Quid nihil nisi minus. Lenzuola, March 1969), they both were shown for the very first time in a lesser-known group exhibition: Nuove ricerche visive in Italia, held in June 1966 at Galleria Milano in Milan. Fabro’s participation in this group show was actively supported by Lucio Fontana, who was the promoter of the collective (together with Nanda Vigo) and had already purchased Tondo e rettangolo from Fabro’s first solo exhibition at Galleria Vismara in Milan, one year before. The paper investigates some formal and theoretical cues in these early works and writings by Luciano Fabro, focusing on the extreme radicalness, in terms of visual perception of the surrounding space, of Mezzo specchiato mezzo trasparente and Tutto trasparente and also stating the importance of this last work for further developments in Fabro’s researches, until In-cubo (1966) and Tautologie (1967-1968) environmental outcomes.