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 freeing oneself from extraneous facts, from futile gestures; facts and gestures that pollute the usual art of our times, and that at times are even highlighted 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 authors and the spectators, as they are the historically determined variations of 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. Pour une peinture organique (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 arrive at the discovery and revelation to ourselves of the intimate structures, the fecundating germs of our organic existence. We want to unequivocally establish these presences.”). 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.