Luciano Fabro e il Gruppo T. La neoavanguardia italiana fra sperimentazioni cinetico-programmate e Arte Povera*
Riccardo Cuomo
Minimal Art is usually considered one of the main reference points for the work of those young Italian artists that Germano Celant, at the end of 1967, gathers under the definition of Arte Povera. This paper tries to provide a different way of approaching that issue, connecting Luciano Fabro’s “minimal” works of the years 1962-1966 with the research on perception and spectator engagement developed in Milan by Gruppo T [T Group] during the first half of the Sixties. Free from any reference to Minimal Art, Fabro’s early work shows its deep relationship with the works of Arte Cinetica e Programmata [Kinetic and Programmed Art] produced by Gruppo T in the same years. This change of perspective aims to read the work of Fabro (and other Arte Povera artists) on a different background, more related to the wide and complex context of the Italian artistic and cultural debate of the Sixties.