Non ho scorso le 17 pagine di questo 3D, magari se n'è già scritto, non ero a conoscenza di una collaborazione di
Ugo La Pietra con
Getulio Alviani , Maurizio Nannucci e
Franco Vaccari a Zafferana Etnea, nell’ambito di un’iniziativa collaterale alla quarta edizione del Premio Brancati (1970).
Ho trovato un testo interessante (di Martina Tanga, in inglese) da cui prendo alcuni estratti e un'immagine. Lascio il testo in inglese, ben comprensibile.
From the north of Italy, artists came, as called, to deliver a response to the socioeconomic downturn afflicting the small Sicilian town of
Zafferana.[..] In the face of recent socioeconomic hardship, the municipal administration decided to try something new, an exhibition and a conference titled Interventi nella città e sul paesaggio (Interventions in the City and Landscape), organized by Florentine curator Lara-Vinca Masini and Roman architect, theorist, and historian Paolo Portoghesi.[..] Among others, artists
Getulio Alviani and Ugo La Pietra came from Milan, Maurizio Nannucci from Florence, and Franco Vaccari from Modena. [..] Alviani and La Pietra knew each other, as both came from Italy’s industrial capital, while it is unclear whether they had a preexisting connection with Nannucci or Vaccari; certainly, they had never worked all together. [..] Arriving in Zafferana, La Pietra, Nannucci, Vaccari, and Alviani suspected that the local judges had rigged the prize selection, endorsing local artists for political reasons. They also realized, much to their chagrin, that the organizers were marshaling a pleasant and uncritical exhibition intended to boost the local economy and tourist industry rather than address the city’s sociopolitical concerns. Feeling betrayed, the four artists rejected these pretenses, as they believed that contemporary architectural or artistic work needed to engage with the real experience of the environment. Impulsively, La Pietra, Nannucci, Vaccari, and Alviani decided to protest the exhibition and created their first collaborative urban intervention.
Segnali di fuoco (Fire Signals) [..] featured ten car tires—five on each side—arranged along a pedestrian crossing in the city’s main square, Piazza Umberto I Belvedere, which the artists set on fire
Establishing a complex, often polemical dialogue with the city and its inhabitants,
Segnali di fuoco was an early example of
Arte Ambientale (Environmental art). Artists and critics alike started to use the term during the 1970s to define the expansion of aesthetic practices out of museums and galleries and into streets and piazzas. [..] Art historian, curator, and critic
Enrico Crispolti defined “
Arte Ambientale [as] part of an urban context, where there are people, where you have an architectural context.[..] Crispolti was one of the leading curators to organize Arte Ambientale exhibitions in Italy’s urban landscape, and his
1976 Venice Biennale exhibition, called Ambiente come Sociale (Environment as Social), solidified the term’s prevalence as he presented urban projects that sought to connect with the experience of the city.