Edited by Sergio Risaliti, Il Dado è tratto presents over forty works by world-famous Italian artists that document the transition away from figurative art after the 1930s. Naturalism no longer represented academic restrictions within which artists were constrained to express themselves. The artist was free to create works that did not necessarily represent reality except in terms of pure geometry. In particular, abstract painting and sculpture created a breach, a distinction in the relationship between traditional and Avant-garde art that had never been free of strife, nor had it ever been resolved. In opposition to the nostalgic glorification or evocation of the classical style was a modern art form that dared to create new shapes, images, and materials without relinquishing any of the fundamental and essential requisites of artistic work. Therefore, at different times, before and after the Second World War, Lucio Fontana, Fausto Melotti, and then Alberto Burri, Giuseppe Capogrossi and Afro created a rift, with new markings, forms, structures and gestures that indexed other aspects rather than religiously representing reality.

A critical essay by Sergio Risaliti introduces the works and artistic-biographical notes on Afro, Alighiero Boetti, Agostino Bonalumi, Alberto Burri, Pierpaolo Calzolari, Giuseppe Capogrossi, Enrico Castellani, Ettore Colla, Gino De Dominicis, Piero Dorazio, Lucio Fontana, Piero Gilardi, Jannis Kounellis, Osvaldo Licini, Francesco Lo Savio, Piero Manzoni, Fausto Melotti, Mario Merz, Mario Nigro, Giulio Paolini, Claudio Parmiggiani, Pino Pascali, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Manlio Rho, Paolo Scheggi, Atanasio Soldati, Giulio Turcato, Giuseppe Uncini, Emilio Vedova, Gilberto Zorio.