The Leo Castelli Gallery in Metro magazine : American approaches to post-abstract figuration in an Italian context

Between the years 1960 and 1970, New York gallerist Leo Castelli was closely involved with Milanese editor and publisher Bruno Alfieri's Metro magazine--an international review of contemporary art. By placing his artists in Metro, Castelli inserted them into the world of Italian art criticism and theory. This recontextualization familiarized the American artists of Castelli's gallery to a European audience and positioned them at the end of a succession of modern European styles. Specifically, Castelli's artists, each of whom engaged in a form of pictorial figuration, were seen as ending the dominance of the "pure" abstraction of the French informel style. This thesis uses the archive of correspondence between Bruno Alfieri and Leo Castelli to examine Castelli's contribution to Metro during the 1960s. Departing from this chronology, it also seeks to understand the unique brand of figuration that each of Castelli's artists brought to Metro, given cues from contemporary Italian theory and criticism--particularly that of Gillo Dorfles, who wrote on several of Castelli's artists.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts

Level thesis:degree_level

Masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Art History

Grantor

The University of Texas at Austin

Year dc:date.issued

2012

Author dc:creator

• McKetta, Dorothy Jean

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Shiff, Richard

• 1960s
• Art
• Informel
• Neo-Dada
• Castelli
• Metro
• Style
• Italy
• Criticism
• Theory
• Rauschenberg
• Venice, Italy
• Milan, Italy
• Rome, Italy
• Twombly
• Lichtenstein
• Dorfles
• Higgins
• Sculpture
• Painting
• Information theory
• Open work
• Steinberg
• Ashton
• Rosenblum
• Dante
• Figuration
• Abstraction
• Alfieri

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright is held by the author. Presentation of this material on the Libraries' web site by University Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin was made possible under a limited license grant from the author who has retained all copyrights in the works.

Language dc:language.iso

spa

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/2152/18520

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:repositories.lib.utexas.edu:2152/18520