De Italia

The particular form of the ‘boot’ of Italy was a recurring subject in the work of Fabro, from 1968 onwards. Adopting this ubiquitously familiar shape, Fabro would produce numerous versions of it in different materials, from lead to crystal, paper, iron or fur, or presented upside down. The various iterations thus represent all kinds of visions of Italy as seen by its inhabitants or by Fabro himself. The shape of Italy, as much as the country itself, its identity, its nature, is presented as under perpetual negotiation, as though the country was something to reformulate constantly. The shape of Italy’, Fabro said, ‘is static, immobile; I measure the mobility of my hands against an immobile thing. Italy is a sketchbook, a memorandum that I kept up over the years. It is a suspended form, which seems capable of infinite variations.’ This perpetual transformation constituted for the artist the essence of the work of art: ‘Form remains the migration of matter. Form is like a pause within a transformation.’ De Italia, made out of canvas, was exhibited in ‘Vitalità del negativo’ at Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome in 1970, under the curatorship of Achille Bonito Oliva. In Fabro’s oeuvre, the use of familiar elements through unusual forms gives rise to a displacement of meaning and of our experience.