I consider myself lucky for the opportunity to spend so many years in the artistic activity …. it is a privilege to live the experience of working about “beauty” … and enjoy high tension moments, so exclusives and essentials.
“Always better than working!” … in fact it is a never-ending job with alternating events of satisfaction and uncertainty … encouragement, exclusion.
The consideration and esteem, specially of artists friends are a good energy.
Unfortunately many absences; Since many years now … also of adventure companions and friends from the high school, with which the journey began with the impulse, the enthusiasm and the generosity that moves the first attempts without calculation … without imagine the next step, its consequences and its scope.
So it was for me at the beginning: GROUP T (where T means TIME).
From high school with Boriani and Devecchi, Colombo and Anceschi at Brera Academy.
The T Group takes shape in the middle of long talk in Brera, in class and around for exhibitions, concerts, cinema, theaters, conferences, with whom and where there was an opportunity. Then you are involved and you feel to take part in an experience that requires commitment and consistency, which has ups and downs and that gets you involved, almost gambling, trying to give form to an insistent idea. ..indispensable.
The result depends on many variations and variables … interest, determination, opportunities, meetings, being at the right time at the right place … etc …
We did not have a studio / workshop in common with the Group’s companions, but we met, however, almost every day in the afternoon for comparisons and predictions or more simply to be together in an unspecified “where”….
Achille Funi that in the afternoons welcomed us in the privacy of his studio, Bordoni with his archetypes, Reggiani with his smoked voice, Guido Ballo dragging us for a tea “but not at cafè Jamaica, too much for painters” … PREISTORY …
The talks had a “motive” in order to overcome the passivity of the informal painting that even though absorbed us.
Group T takes shape … at the end of ’59 … “the four” start a contact at the Galleria Pater for the Miriorama Exhibition in January.
I was always present and involved, but I realize that “the four” do not think or maybe dare not prove to think of imagining me as a component …
With naturalness, without resentment, so that I do not feel excluded from part of my interests, I simply ask “WHY NOT ME?” Perhaps I surprise them in fault …?
The answer to the well-reasoned question is immediate and agreeable even if it seeks to ensure it by quoting earlier “historical” ones like Le Cercle et Carre with Sophie Tauber Arp …
So I’m a legitimate part of the Group T.
I don’t know … In the aftermath I thought that at the end of the 50’s, it was thought and acted according to a conditioning involving males and females … obviously to the benefit of man.
Two months after the first Miriorama event in January 1960, at the end of the first cycle of exhibitions of group members, I participated with the magnetic boards at Miriorama 6, March 1960 at the Galleria Pater in Milan.
Here we are in the legendary 60s … really mythical for young people who, like us without knowing it, could try to be part of the magic moment of BOOM … in Milan.
A promising and culturally vibrant Milan that saw growing the Pirellone (Pirelli skyscraper), the Bega and the Velasca tower, that leaves Gluck Street, that welcomed the Beatles with enthusiasm and so we learned two words in English.
A “mythical” time now … in effect, a daily life lived without emphasis, except in the fur of Fontana and in some rips to the rules of conformism.
And then we, who with an electric motor we thought we were moving the world…
We, Group T, meanwhile began to meet other groups.
From Milan to Rome at the Galleria della Salita of Liverani, with Tano Festa and Schifano playing on my Magnetic Board …. And the charm of Palma Bucarelli that includes us in the collection of GNAM …. and Dorazio in his studio where we sit on the wooden boards of a shelf in preparation.
Then in Padova with the N group, closest to our artistic practice, with heated discussions on the importance of collective identity and relations between political ideology and art.
The attention of critics and audenciens to our new experimental proposals promotes the project and development of the exhibition “Arte programmata” in 1962 proposed by Munari and supported by Adriano Olivetti and his company. The exhibition includes Group T, Group N, Enzo Mari and Bruno Munari.
After the great interest shown by critics and public in the Olivetti shop in Milan, the event moves to Rome and then to Venice (in the beautiful venue of the Olivetti Shop designed by Carlo Scarpa) with the participation of Getulio Alviani and the French group GRAV. The show gains an international outlook and was exhibited at overseas locations including MoMa in New York, State University of Tallahassee (Florida), and The Goppinger Gallery in Dusseldorf.
And we were around meeting experiences and people ….Bruno Munari, Lucio Fontana … Umberto Eco, Piero Manzoni, Enrico Castellani, already started a few years before, with courage, because they were a little older then us .
Individual personalities such as Dadamaino, Nanda Vigo, Enzo Mari, Giorgio Soavi, many casual encounters that sometimes become frequentations and even friendships.
But also other meetings … Ugo Mulas and then Cadario, Carla Pellegrini, Zita Vismara, Carlo and Renato Cardazzo and then … Schwarz … and with Guido Ballo that kept us under control, and Dorfles, Argan, Menna, Belloli and Umbro Apollonius who were also interested on our work and supported us.
These experiences in affinity and sympathy, fuel our attempt to experiment.
Everything to try … Everything to be checked …
Everything happened concentrate and matured in the early sixties …
The T Group’s exchange experience is gradually decreasing in the second half of the 1960s when, for reasons of work and personal interests, each friend part of the group, has pursued its activity and research independently.
All this was yesterday … the day before yesterday … even before ….…… and today?
Today, a reflection on settled and considered historical experiences, is proposed with the intent of rediscovering and point out the premises of later recognizables and recognized developments.
This attention has the meaning of an appreciated acknowledgment that partly revolves around the renewed interest for research in kinetic and gestalt art works of the 1960s and 1970s.
It’s a moment … a breath … that takes us back to the years of Gluck Street, without feeling regret, except for the freshness of our attempts.
It can be an opportunity to distinguish between research and constant repetition that continues to proliferate, imitate, and produce without self-criticizing “curious” objects … with and without engine color lights and technology that amaze … and that I’m amazed at the stupidity of the result.
I regret the approximation that so superficially confuses everything, ready to level everything in a bulimia of images and easy feelings, abandoned by the breath of poetry.
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