This fall, Magazzino Italian Art opens a special exhibition examining the formal, conceptual, and procedural affinities in the work of Mel Bochner, Alighiero Boetti, and Lucio Fontana. Curated by Bochner in collaboration with Magazzino, the exhibition marks the first presentation to consider the American artist’s extensive, yet overlooked, engagement with the practices of Fontana and Boetti, as well as with Italian art at large. Bochner Boetti Fontana offers, through the artist’s perspective, a number of resonances between his work and that of the Italian and Italian-Argentine artists: an exploration of systems, language, and materials; and a sense of irony and humor, often and especially shared by Arte Povera and Conceptualism, as all these works opened the work of art onto the space of display. The exhibition also traces parallels between the artistic movements that developed on both sides of the Atlantic during the 1960s and 1970s: Spatialism and Arte Povera in Italy, and Process and Conceptual art in the United States. 

On view October 2, 2020 through January 11, 2021, Bochner Boetti Fontana features paintings, sculptures, and installations, including works from Bochner’s personal archive, as well as major international loans. The exhibition is presented with the support of the Archivio Alighiero Boetti and Fondazione Lucio Fontana, and is accompanied by a catalog, featuring contributions from Bochner and Magazzino’s 2019-20 Scholar-in-Residence Tenley Bick, who is also Assistant Professor of Global Contemporary Art at Florida State University.