Horses and Other Herbivores. Futurist Traces and Disputed Identities in Contemporary Italian Art 1969-2010

Abstract: An unusually numerous population of horses, donkeys and zebras has crossed the plains of Italian art in the last fifteen years, coinciding with a widespread (and perplexed) reflection on the characters and specificities of national art. In several ways - this is the thesis of the present essay - the population of herbivores epitomizes the debate over the “current relevance or non-relevance” of the avant-gardist model, and constitutes a sardonic metaphor of the journalistic debate on the Italian “decline,” dealt with extensively by the major national newspapers.