Tra diplomazia culturale e controcultura: Eugenio Battisti, Alan Solomon e la mostra “Young Italians” del 1968

The essay provides a historical context for Young Italians: the exhibition held in 1968 at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in Boston and the Jewish Museum in New York.The exhibition was the first overview of trends in Italian art from the 1960s in an American museum, covering movements ranging from Nuova Figurazione to Optical Art, from Pop Art to Arte Povera. Bedarida investigates how the exhibition was influenced by the compounding factors of cultural diplomacy surrounding the mid-century economic boom, the Cold War emphasis on transatlantic exchange, and anti-imperialist initiatives emerging in the wake of the Vietnam War. After mapping the sociopolitical climate, Bedarida reflects on how the scholar and activist Eugenio Battisti conceived of the exhibition and why it came to be curated by Alan Solomon, the curator of the 1964 Venice Biennale. The essay concludes with a consideration of Young Italians’ legacy, which served both as a formative experience and a cautionary tale for Germano Celant and Kynaston McShine, two curators who shaped the art discourse on Arte Povera and Conceptual Art in this period.