Art & Architecture - Southern Italy - page 504

east, among them Noto, Modica and Ragusa. Grid-patterned streets were laid and spacious
piazzas were lined with confident, curvaceous buildings. The result was a highly idiosyn-
cratic barocco siciliano (Sicilian baroque), best known for its cheeky stone putti (cher-
ubs), wrought-iron balustrades and grand external staircases. Equally unique was the use
of dramatic, centrally placed church belfries, often shooting straight above the central
pediment. Two of the finest examples are Ragusa's Cattedrale di San Giorgio and Mod-
ica's Chiesa di San Giorgio, both designed by the prolific Rosario Gagliardi (1698-1762).
Sicily's most celebrated baroque architect, however, was Giovanni Battista Vaccarini
(1702-68). Trained in Rome, Vaccarini dedicated three decade of his life to rebuilding
earthquake-stricken Catania, using the region's volcanic black rock to dramatic effect in
the Piazza del Duomo. His reputation led him to join forces with Neapolitan starchitect
Luigi Vanvitelli (1700-73) in the creation of Italy's epic baroque epilogue, the Palazzo
Reale in Caserta, Campania.
CONTEMPORARY MOVEMENTS
Of the many movements that shaped Italy's 20th-century art scene, few match the radical innovation of Arte
Povera (Poor Art). Emerging from the economic and political instability of the 1960s, its artists aimed to blur the
boundary between art and life. Using everyday materials and mediums ranging from painting and photography to
installations, they created works that put the viewer at the centre, triggering personal memories and associations.
The movement would ultimately pave the way for contemporary installation art. Its leading practitioners included
Mario Merz (1925-2003), Luciano Fabro (1936-2007) and Giovanni Anselmo (b 1934), the latter's sculptures in-
spired by the geological forces of Stromboli. Another icon of the scene is the Greek-born Jannis Kounellis (b
1936), whose brooding installations often focus on the disintegration of culture in the modern world. Naples'
MADRE contains a fine collection of Kounellis' creations, as well as other Arte Povera works. Among the witti-
est is Michelangelo Pistoletti's Venere degli stracci (Venus of the Rags), in which a Greek goddess contemplates
a pile of modern hand-me-downs.
Reacting against Arte Povera's conceptual tendencies was the 'Transavanguardia' movement of the late 1970s
and 1980s, which refocussed attention on painting and sculpture in a traditional (primarily figurative) sense.
Among its leading artists are Mimmo Paladino (b 1948) and Francesco Clemente (b 1952). Both of these Cam-
panian artists are represented in Naples' Novecento a Napoli, a museum dedicated to 20th-century southern Itali-
an art.