Luciano Fabro: Drawing as Space

Magazzino Italian Art is pleased to announce the latest exhibition of the Italian Cultural Institute in New York, Luciano Fabro: Drawing as Space (April 15–May 15, 2024), the first show in a decade dedicated to the artist’s works on paper.

Curated by Ilaria Bernardi and Silvia Fabro, Luciano Fabro: Drawing as Space looks at the two principal ways Fabro understood drawing: as a method of study for more elaborate sculptures and installations, and as an artform in itself, conceived and executed specifically to explore the possibilities of ink on paper.

Among the highlights of the exhibition are two untitled works from 1962 that Fabro later expanded for his first solo show, in 1965, and two examples from his Macchie di Rorschach series (1976), which mimic the Rorschach ink-blot test. The exhibition ends with two major works: Far di un cielo un senso (1997), for which Fabro used a typewritten poem to evoke elements of physical, anthropological, and natural space; and Disegno malato (1995), which takes the concept of drawing itself as its subject matter, representing it as an ovoid sign.

Fabro (1936–2007) was one of the most important artists of the Italian postwar period. Known for his innovative research into sculpture and space, he was also a committed teacher. His work on paper—a relatively little-known part of his oeuvre—was central to his practice from the early 1960s until his death at the age of 71.

Work by Fabro is currently on view in Magazzino’s ongoing Arte Povera exhibition, which presents examples by twelve artists associated with the movement. His works are also in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The New Orleans Museum of Art, and CCS Bard (Hessel Museum of Art) in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.