TEATRO DELLE MOSTRE
ROMA, MAGGIO 1968
ROMA, MAGGIO 1968
Milan: Scalpendi, 2014
The book, edited by Ilaria Bernardi, offers an exhaustive reconstruction of Teatro delle Mostre, a singular exhibition held in May 1968 in Rome at Galleria La Tartaruga, its context and critical reception. Unpublished interviews with the participating artists and iconographic accounts of the individual interventions complete the historical-critical documentation of the exhibition.
On the occasion of Teatro delle Mostre, the gallery owner Plinio De Martiis took on the role of director of a sequence of works and events lasting just one day, conceived and interpreted by twenty exponents of the Italian artistic avant-garde of the time. Aiming at the total “dematerialization” and “de-aesthetization” of art, the event subverted the common conception of the work of art as a commodifiable object in itself, in order to question and redefine the role of the art gallery, the gallery owner, the critic, the author, and the spectator.