Luciano Fabro: Reinventing Sculpture
November 4, 2024
Magazzino Italian Art
Luciano Fabro: Reinventing Sculpture
November 23, 2024
Cold Spring, NY, November 4, 2024—On November 23, Magazzino Italian Art, in collaboration with Monacelli Press, will present a talk on the book Luciano Fabro: Reinventing Sculpture by Margit Rowell. Nicola Lucchi, the Museum’s Director of Research & Education, will join Rowell for a conversation on the artist’s work and legacy.
Luciano Fabro (1936–2007) was an Italian sculptor and installation artist known for his refined and unorthodox conceptual works. Initially identified as a core figure in the Arte Povera movement of the late 1960s, Fabro was only tied to the movement for two years at its inception. Driven by relentless curiosity and resistance to labels, he engaged with a range of late twentieth-century media and movements over the course of the following four decades, while always building his own unique paradigms.
Published in collaboration with the Luciano Fabro estate, Luciano Fabro: Reinventing Sculpture is the first complete monograph on this esteemed artist. The book focuses on how Fabro critiqued and reimagined the Italian artistic tradition in works that reference early Renaissance art, sculptures that repurpose materials used in Italian antiquity, and his emblematic Italie series, a career-spanning sculptural project using the silhouette of the Italian Peninsula.
Published with the support of Paula Cooper Gallery and written by art historian, curator, and longtime friend of the artist Margit Rowell, the book offers an intimate understanding of Fabro’s thinking. Having conducted many interviews with Fabro and documented his work until his passing, Rowell is able to create an ever-present sense of the artist’s voice.
The book has been released in October 2024.
Event Details:
Saturday, November 23, 2024, 12pm
Magazzino Italian Art, Cold Spring, NY
Tickets are $10 and include a free coffee from Café Silvia and museum admission.
About Magazzino Italian Art
Magazzino Italian Art is a museum and research center dedicated to advancing scholarship and public appreciation of postwar and contemporary Italian art in the United States. Located in Cold Spring, New York, the museum was founded by Nancy Olnick and Giorgio Spanu.
In 2017, the first building, designed by architect Miguel Quismondo and set within several landscaped acres of the Hudson Highlands, was inaugurated with an exhibition drawn from the Olnick Spanu Collection and dedicated to Margherita Stein, founder of the historic Galleria Christian Stein in Milan and a key advocate and supporter of the artists associated with Arte Povera. In 2023, Magazzino inaugurated the Research Center, named for the art critic and historian who gave Arte Povera its name.
Created as an educational not for profit museum, Magazzino Italian Art increased its indoor space by two-thirds in September 2023 by opening the freestanding Robert Olnick Pavilion designed by architects Alberto Campo Baeza and Miguel Quismondo and named in memory of philanthropist and art advocate Robert Olnick. This new building provides a multipurpose room with auditorium capabilities, a store, and Café Silvia serving Italian specialties.
About Margit Rowell
Margit Rowell is an art historian and independent curator who has held key curatorial positions at cultural institutions in the United States and Europe, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Centre Georges Pompidou, and the Museum of Modern Art. She is the author, coauthor, or contributor to numerous books on twentieth-century artists. She lives in Paris.
About Monacelli
As a leading publisher of illustrated books for more than twenty-five years, Monacelli has challenged the conventions of publishing to produce provocative, inspiring, and essential titles. Founded in 1994 by Gianfranco Monacelli, the organization has released nearly 600 books on architecture, art, interior design, landscape and gardens, photography, and the applied arts. Monacelli’s books have been made in collaboration with prominent practitioners and scholars ever since its inaugural title, the groundbreaking S,M,L,XL by Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau. In 2015, the applied arts imprint Monacelli Studio was launched, adding elevated books on art instruction, photography technique, and crafts to the publisher’s roster. In 2020, Monacelli joined the Phaidon family of companies.