Arte di frontiera. New York Graffiti, Palazzo Esposizioni Roma, 1984. photo @ Stefano Fontebasso De Martino

The exhibition Arte di frontiera. New York Graffiti opened to the public at the Palazzo Esposizioni Roma on 11 September 1984. On that same day Keith Haring created a graffiti on the plinth of the building’s staircase, and Stefano Fontebasso De Martino photographed the artist in action and those who had stopped to observe him. 

The exhibition had been previously on show at the Galleria Comunale d’Arte Moderna in Bologna, where it had opened in March 1984, and later at the Galleria del Sagrato in Piazza Duomo in Milan. The entire exhibition project was due to Francesca Alinovi, who died prematurely a few months before the Bologna show opened. A critic and art historian who studied with Francesco Arcangeli and Renato Barilli from the University of Bologna, Francesca Alinovi was an emblematic figure of the second half of the 1970s and early 1980s, for the accelerated pace of her “militant and performative criticism,” for her openness to aesthetic languages that were then unrecognized and deliberately marginal, and for the contaminations which she had been able to weave into her activity.

Arte di frontiera. New York Graffiti presented itself as an illuminating critical-theoretical insight into the relationship between urban art and artistic processes that were already developing outside established contexts. The exhibition was one of the first opportunities to see artists such as A One, Jean-Michel Basquiat, James Brown, Ronnie Cutrone, Futura 2000, Keith Haring, Jenny Holzer, Crash, Daze, and Rammellzee to Italy for the first time.

The talk will retrace the history of the exhibition through the projection of photographic and video documents, some of which have never been seen before, Fabiola Naldi's historical account and the first-hand recollections of those who experienced the days of Arte di frontiera at Palazzo Esposizioni Roma.

The talk will also be an opportunity to reflect on the legacy of Francesca Alinovi’s critical and theoretical vision with the presentation of the project Frontier 40 Italian Style Writing 1984-2024 curated by Fabiola Naldi for the 40th anniversary of Arte di frontiera. New York Graffiti.

Speakers:
Fabiola Naldi, art historian and critic
Renato Barilli, art historian, art critic and professor emeritus University of Bologna
Lucio Turchetta, architect
Stefano Fontebasso De Martino, photographer
Claudio Pisani, photographer
Daniela Lancioni, senior curator Azienda Speciale Palaexpo
 
 

Informazioni

Admission free while places last

Auditorium - Palazzo Esposizioni Roma

Admission via steps in via Milano 9a