PIERO MANZONI (1933-1963)SCRITTI E DOCUMENTI (1956-1963)

Piero Manzoni (1933-1963). Scritti e documenti (1956-1963) focuses principally on two paths destined to intersect: a commentary on the texts published during the artist’s lifetime and a critical anthology composed of reviews, articles and texts published in Italy; in both cases the chronological extremes are the summer of 1956 and the February of 1963. A major primary source of material is without doubt the archive of the Fondazione Piero Manzoni in Milan, in part still under-explored by researchers. Documents, letters, texts and in some cases even new works have been found in private collections and in institutional archives and libraries. This paper is principally concerned with underling the various periods of Manzoni’s early career; that is to say, when the young artist was involved in direct exchanges and experiences with the great Italian artists – who undoubtedly drew on stimuli from international culture – of the previous generations. This germinal period was also the richest in terms of manifestos and texts, with relative drafts, proofs and notes, some already known and studied and others still awaiting clarification. In recent years there has been an increase in the number of publications and exhibitions on Manzoni’s “later” years, analysing his output from around 1959-1960 through to his premature death, in substance from the period of the magazine Azimuth and the Galleria Azimut onwards, a period in which his work, projects and contacts had a European scope, delineating new forms and genealogies. Unfortunately, however, less attention has been paid to analysis of Manzoni’s early period, the formative years, his roots, his first solitary or “nuclear” or slightly “concretist” ventures that form the origins and foundations of the later European projects. The brief introductory essay primarily attempts to “list” ideas, materials, reflections and figures very frequently “new”, unpublished, forgotten or neglected. A commentary on the texts, Manzoni’s words and the thinking of his critics complete this endless study. A further twist is provided by this author’s own research; the material discovered during the past three years’ study join and intersect with documents analysed previously which have in some cases first seen the light of day in articles published in monographical works, exhibition catalogues or conference papers. The more the research into Manzoni progresses, the clearer the idea of the infinite becomes – the “infinitable” as Manzoni himself would say – in the sense that it is open-ended.