LA TARTARUGA
STORIA DI UNA GALLERIA
STORIA DI UNA GALLERIA
Milan: Postmedia books, 2018
The book, edited by Ilaria Bernardi, constitutes the first analytical study of the activity of the historical La Tartaruga gallery, examining in depth the crucial years from 1954 to 1968, while at the same time providing the first precise chronological reconstruction of the gallery’s entire exhibition and publishing activity up to the gallery owner’s death in 2004. Based on an extensive perusal of his archives, the volume thus brings together news, excerpts from publications, and largely unpublished photographic material.
Since its opening in Rome in February 1954, Galleria La Tartaruga assumed a leading role in the development of Italian avant-garde art. During the 1950s, Plinio De Martiis organized important exhibitions, including the first solo shows in Europe of Franz Kline and Cy Twombly; at the beginning of the 1960s, it was one of the first private Italian exhibition spaces to establish relations with the United States, the first to promote Pop Art research in the capital, becoming the point of reference for that group of young artists destined to become part of the so-called Italian Pop movement, better defined as the ‘School of Piazza del Popolo,’ including Franco Angeli, Mario Ceroli, Tano Festa, Giosetta Fioroni, Jannis Kounellis, Sergio Lombardo, Renato Mambor, Pino Pascali, Mario Schifano, and Cesare Tacchi.