1957 FIRST MANIFESTOS

Manzoni, who now had a studio in Via Montebello, was involved in the drafting of increasingly ambitious theoretical texts that he was to publish that year. On the occasion of the exhibition at the Pater gallery he presented the printed manifesto “L’arte non è vera creazione…” (Art is not true creation…) which was also signed by Sordini and Verga, in which it was claimed, “The difficulty lies in the freeing oneself of extraneous facts, of futile gestures; facts and gestures that pollute the normal art of our times, and which sometimes are in fact emphasised to the point that they become insignia of artistic trends”: one has to arrive at “Images that are the prime images, our totems, ours and those of the artists and spectators, as they are the variations historically determined by the primordial mythologems (individual mythology and universal mythology identify themselves).”

In search of an independent position within the panorama of Nuclear Art, the movement closest to him, and a visibility he had identified, in June he distributed at the Bar Jamaica, a hangout for artists in Via Brera, the manifesto “Per una pittura organica” (For an organic painting), also signed along with Sordini, Verga and the Neapolitan nuclear artists Guido Biasi and Mario Colucci (“We want to organicize disintegration. In a disintegrated world we want to discover, to reveal to ourselves the intimate structures, the fecundating germs of our organic existence. We want to establish these presences unequivocally.”). On the 29th of June, he participated in the Quinta mostra mercato dell’arte (Fifth art market exhibition) organized at Schettini in Milan, the gallery of reference for the nuclear artists and the Phases group.