1959 AZIMUTH AND AZIMUT

While on the 8th of September a new edition of Bonalumi Castellani Manzoni was presented at the Galerie Kasper in Lausanne, which also published the magazine Art actuel international, on the 3rd of September the official announcement was made regarding the launch in Milan of the magazine Azimuth, edited by Manzoni and Castellani from Manzoni’s apartment in Via Cernaia 4. It was printed by Antonio Maschera in Via Palermo 14, the same printer used for much of Manzoni’s early promotional material and where he conducted his experiments with papers.   

The tone of the first issue was in line with that of the avant-garde periodicals proliferating in those years (Maschera had also printed and continued to print Il Gesto and Direzioni by Fabrizio Mondadori), but it was clear that Manzoni had in mind a wider project of avant-garde grouping: he contributed reviews to the Roman periodical Il Pensiero Nazionale, worked on new texts and above all founded with Castellani the Azimut gallery.

The gallery, located in a basement at Via Clerici 12, was an artist-run space that opened on the 4th of December with Manzoni’s solo show Le Linee, introduced by Vincenzo Agnetti.

At the end of the year Manzoni also began to create his Corpi d’aria (Bodies of Air), inflatable balloons to be placed as a sculpture on a tripod supplied in the box as a kit conceived by him. Gian Paolo Maccentelli filmed two ironic documentaries on the Linee and the Corpi d’aria for the SEDI Newsreel.