Italian Art - Italian Modern and Contemporary Art

Italian Modern and Contemporary Art

Early in the 20th century the exponents of futurism developed a dynamic vision of the modern world while Giorgio de Chirico expressed a strange metaphysical quietude and Amedeo Modigliani joined the school of Paris. Gifted later modern artists include the sculptors Giacomo Manzù, Marino Marini, the still-life painter Giorgio Morandi, and the iconoclastic painter Lucio Fontana. In the second half of the 20th century Italian designers, particularly those of Milan, have profoundly influenced international styles with their imaginative and ingenious functional works.

Read more about this topic:  Italian Art

Famous quotes containing the words italian, modern, contemporary and/or art:

    Semantically, taste is rich and confusing, its etymology as odd and interesting as that of “style.” But while style—deriving from the stylus or pointed rod which Roman scribes used to make marks on wax tablets—suggests activity, taste is more passive.... Etymologically, the word we use derives from the Old French, meaning touch or feel, a sense that is preserved in the current Italian word for a keyboard, tastiera.
    Stephen Bayley, British historian, art critic. “Taste: The Story of an Idea,” Taste: The Secret Meaning of Things, Random House (1991)

    Not so many years ago there there was no simpler or more intelligible notion than that of going on a journey. Travel—movement through space—provided the universal metaphor for change.... One of the subtle confusions—perhaps one of the secret terrors—of modern life is that we have lost this refuge. No longer do we move through space as we once did.
    Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)

    Men are so charmed with valor that they have pleased themselves with being called lions, leopards, eagles and dragons, from the animals contemporary with us in the geologic formations.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    Come, Kate, thou art perfect in lying down.
    Come, quick, quick, that I may lay my head in thy lap.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)