“Bianco Italia” is the catalogue of the new exhibition which Tornabuoni Art Gallery dedicates to the Italian avant-gardes which have explored the creation of monochromatic white works. The show unites about forty works by artists who experimented with the purity of this “non-colour” in the late Fifties, and represents a true collective archive. The itinerary will feature works by Vincenzo Agnetti, Alberto Biasi, Alighiero Boetti, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Enrico Castellani, Dadamaino, Lucio Fontana, Piero Manzoni, Salvatore Scarpitta, Turi Simeti, Nanda Vigo and other interpreters of Italian white.
This volume by Forma Edizioni features all the works on show in the exhibition presented by Tornabuoni Art, in addition to a number of hitherto unpublished images of the artists at work. A critical essay by Dominique Stella, curator of the catalogue and of the exhibition, introduces the section with biographies and images of the works of each of the artists included in the exhibition.
“[…] The white line, which seemed to mark the passage toward the second half of the twentieth century, introduced a creative vibration and announced socio-politic and artistic transformations. It was in itself a symbol of a universal questioning.A generation was born, which was able to confront reality, and invented an art so powerful that it added a new dimension to creation – which, in these post-war years, was yearning for an artistic and spiritual renovation, engaged in an attempt to redefine modernity. In Manzoni’s words, a « new artistic conception », a spirit of resistance, was opposed to the triumphant materialism of the emerging consumer society. It seemed as though European idealism wished to counter-balance the cynicism of artists such as Warhol; it responded to the American Pop movement with a “Zen” attitude that the color white spectacularly embodied. ”

DOMINIQUE STELLA operates as a historian of contemporary art between Italy and France. From 1993 to 1998 she was director of the Palazzo Reale in Milan, and of the exhibition of the Centro culturale Francese in Milano (1996-2002). Since its founding in 1987, she participates in the activities of the Foundation Mudima. With Clara Vega she founded the Stella & Vega Production company that promotes contemporary artists of international renown.