The book thus becomes an experimental ‘space’ – conceived as an independent artistic form, endowed with its own aesthetics and its own code – in which text, image, paper, printing and binding techniques are employed as elements of a new language.

Artists’ interest in artistic publishing was renewed and intensified in the experimental climate of the 1960s. This was the case with Gruppo 70, which established itself as one of the most radical movements of the Italian Neo-avantgarde. The collective was founded in 1963 during the Arte e Comunicazione conference in Florence, and presented itself as a multidisciplinary association bringing together artists, poets and musicians, including Lucia Marcucci, Ketty La Rocca, Lamberto Pignotti, Eugenio Miccini, Giuseppe Chiari, Roberto Malquori, Michele Perfetti and Luciano Ori.

The group, which enjoyed the theoretical support of figures such as Umberto Eco, developed a new form of ‘verbal-visual’ expression, known as visual poetry, in which text and image no longer exist as separate entities but merge into an inseparable unity.

The Florentine Neo-avant-garde made a radical break with traditional and ‘institutional’ art, setting itself the goal of dissolving the ‘crystallized formats characteristic of high culture‘ and pursuing a language capable of responding critically to the logic of mass communication. Unlike American Pop Art, however – which tends to reduce words to elements of purely decorative and allusive value – Gruppo 70 adopts language as an ideological tool.

The practice of ‘communication guerrilla warfare’ takes the form of deconstructing the codes of advertising and mass media, recharging them with political and provocative content that offers a critical take on consumerism. Emblematic in this sense is the work of Lamberto Pignotti, whose collection Pubbli-città (1974) subjects the languages of advertising and urban signage to a process of estrangement and critical reappropriation; similarly, his Journal (1976), with the ironic insertion of Giorgio Vasari’s Vite preface, combines poetic text and photographic imagery in a deliberately hybrid editorial form that bridges high and popular culture.

In this context, the artist’s book emerges as the preferred field of experimentation: Lightweight, easy to reproduce, and removed from the institutional circles of the museum world, it allows text and image to be interwoven within a formally defined space. In their books, the artists combine – amongst other elements – newspaper clippings, comic-book imagery and political slogans, as evidenced in the KHI collection by the magazine Lotta Poetica and Eugenio Miccini’s volume Poetry gets into life (1972).

Gruppo 70 is also characterized by a preference for self-publishing. Luciano Ori created the series Poesia Visiva, whilst his Spartiti Teatrali (1971) demonstrate the extension of verbal-visual research towards performative and theatrical notation.

Felice Piemontese published Ancora delle poesie visive (1972) in an edition of just one hundred copies, numbered and signed by the author – as attested by the dedication visible on copy no. 12 held at the KHI – confirming how these objects not only deliberately place themselves outside the circles of commercial publishing, but stand as unique examples of verbal-visual experimentation.

Giuseppe Chiari, a central figure in the Fluxus art and music scene, is also represented in the collection with Musica madre (1973), a work in which musical notation dissolves into visual writing. Stelio Maria Martini is represented by Formulazioni non-A (1963) and the volume Schemi (1962), whilst Giusi Coppini features with Ovverosia dell’imprevedibile (1973).

In the artist’s books of the 1960s and 1970s, artists deliberately broke with the traditional norms and aesthetic standards of book printing. The use of experimental printing techniques, the subversion of classical typography and the adoption of unconventional layouts were intended to challenge the book’s function as a mere vehicle for information.

Through the dissolution of writing and text into unusual forms – often problematic in terms of legibility, as demonstrated by the pages of graphic notation in Ori’s Spartiti Teatrali or Miccini’s verbal-visual overlays – the reader’s established relationship with the book as an object is radically called into question.

The collection of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence, with its variety of formats, techniques and authors, offers concrete and material evidence of this experimental period, of which Lamberto Pignotti’s scathing comic-book version of the Biblia pauperum (1977) is an emblematic example.

Photographs: Bärbel Reinhard (Fondazione Studio Marangoni)
Concept and coordination: Verena Gebhard