La poesia ti guarda. Omaggio al Gruppo 70 (1963-2023)

The Galleria d’Arte Moderna di Roma Capitale pays tribute to Gruppo 70 sixty years after its official foundation with the conference “Art and Communication” on 24 May 1963.

Although short-lived – as early as the end of 1968 its promoters embarked on individual artistic paths – Gruppo 70 was one of the most interesting artistic sodalities that arose in the context of the neo-avant-gardes and the one most capable of comprehensively and coherently interpreting the international movement of visual poetry. The new aesthetic solutions elaborated referred explicitly to Futurist, Dadaist and Surrealist suggestions, situating themselves in a suggestive “middle ground” between writing and image, visual arts and poetry.

Through a selection of works by the two founders Eugenio Miccini and Lamberto Pignotti, by Ketty La Rocca, Lucia Marcucci, Luciano Ori, Roberto Malquori and Michele Perfetti, the exhibition illustrates the artists’ poetic and aesthetic choices and modes of expression, their multi-media and synaesthetic leanings, and their exploration and deconstruction of the various expressive codes of the contemporary world. The works, mostly unpublished or little known, come from the Galleria d’Arte Moderna, the Carlo Palli Archive in Prato, MART in Rovereto, the Lamberto Pignotti Archive in Rome, the Bonotto Foundation in Colceresa (Vicenza) and other prestigious private collections.

Accompanying the exhibition are sound poems and cinepoems, artist’s books and documents that illustrate in various ways the theoretical premises, poetic reasons and expressive outcomes of Gruppo 70. The event is part of a series of exhibition initiatives related to the Italian avant-garde and neo-avant-garde movements of the 20th century documented by the Capitoline art collections.