{"id":66,"date":"2025-12-05T19:50:22","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T19:50:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.stefanogiovanazzi.eu\/menna\/"},"modified":"2025-12-11T12:56:56","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T12:56:56","slug":"filiberto-menna","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.stefanogiovanazzi.eu\/en\/filiberto-menna\/","title":{"rendered":"Filiberto Menna"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Filiberto MennaCritica della criticaFeltrinelli, Milan, 1980<\/p>\n\n

courtesy Stefano Giovanazzi<\/a>aac archivio arte contemporanea roveretocaa contemporary art archive roveretovia Vittorio Veneto 5, Rovereto (TN) Italia<\/p>\n\n

One of 160,000 documents<\/p>\n\n

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Filiberto Menna (Salerno, 11 November 1926 \u2013 Rome, 9 February 1988) was an Italian art historian, scholar of modern art, university professor at the University of Salerno and at the Faculty of Architecture of La Sapienza University of Rome.<\/a><\/p>\n\n

His father was Alfonso Menna, mayor of Salerno from 1956 to 1970. He graduated in medicine before earning a degree in art history. Thanks to his publication of The Prophecy of an Aesthetic Society, he found a poetic affinity with the Sardinian artist Maria Lai. In 1959, he married Bianca Pucciarelli, a poet known under the pseudonym Tomaso Binga, of Lucanian origins. From 1960, the salient features of Menna’s critical orientation became clear. His first book, a major essay on Mondrian, appeared in 1962, an artist who would recur consistently in Menna’s intellectual biography. Menna continued his research in the historical avant-garde, focusing on Futurism. He strongly supported the most rigorous forms of abstraction, and in other works he delved into nature and design. This experience led to the book Industrial Design, which fully explored the theme of a possible integration of art with industrial production and thus with modern society. Always attentive to reflecting on the role of criticism (Critica della critica, 1980) and discussing the themes of architecture and industrial design (Industrial Design, 1962, La regola e il caso. Architettura e societ\u00e0, 1970), over the years Filiberto Menna combined his research with intense curatorial activity\u2014he served, among other things, as a commissioner for the Venice Biennale and the Rome Quadriennale\u2014and as a militant critic. An art historian, theorist, activist critic, university professor, exhibition curator, and politically engaged cultural activist, Filiberto Menna has interwoven diverse discourses and fields of knowledge in his writing, examining painting and design, architecture and the city, aesthetics, and poetry, recognizing Modernity as the central focus of his reflections. Having come to art criticism after studying medicine, Filiberto Menna trained under Lionello Venturi and Giulio Carlo Argan, who introduced him to the need to make the study of art a science. In 1962, he published his first monograph on Piet Mondrian (reprinted in 1999), followed in 1967 by one on Enrico Prampolini. These volumes focus on the analysis of significant figures of the historical avant-garde, a subject of reflection in the essay, first published in 1968, “Prophecy of an Aesthetic Society.” By the late 1960s, he had become the cultural reference for the Analytical Painting movement. Interest in Surrealism dates back to the 1960s and 1970s. During the 1972-73 academic year, it was a central focus of the Institute of Art History at the University of Salerno, directed by Filiberto Menna. Menna held the chair (the first in Italy) of contemporary art history at the University of Salerno and was dean of the Faculty of Education until his transfer to the Faculty of Architecture in Rome in 1978. This transition marked the end of the scholar’s intense period in Salerno, characterized not only by dynamic academic activity but also by courageous political and institutional commitment, documented in the essays collected in the volume Inside and Outside. Intellectuals and Institutions, published on the eve of the conclusion of his term on the Campania Regional Council, where Menna had been elected as an independent candidate on the PCI (Italian Communist Party) list. His best-known book, The Analytical Line of Modern Art, dates back to 1975 and has been constantly republished for the lucidity and originality of its theoretical framework. It was followed in 1980 by a reflection on the status of criticism (Critica della critica). In 1982 he published Quadro critico. Dalle avanguardie all’Arte Informale. Industrial Design (1962) and La regola e il caso. Architettura e societ\u00e0 (1970), which instead collect his interventions more directly addressed to the theme of architectural design. His commitment to research is accompanied by an intense activity as a militant critic, which Filiberto Menna has carried out uninterruptedly since 1960, first on Telesera, then on Mattino and Il Globo, and finally on Corriere della Sera and Paese sera (1978-89) where, quite rarely in Italian newspapers, he curated a page entirely dedicated to art. In 1982, he founded the magazine Figure, dedicated to theoretical reflections on contemporary art and the aesthetics of the Modern. A curator of numerous exhibitions\u2014among other things, he served as commissioner for the Venice Biennale, and curated the section “The Seventies” in the exhibition “Lines of Artistic Research in Italy from 1960 to 1980,” the 1981 edition of the Rome Quadrennial\u2014Menna was deeply committed to the idea of \u200b\u200bart as a living, participatory experience. From this approach, he developed Astrazione povera, a project to rethink an analytical logic of painting, around which a group of artists gathered in a series of joint initiatives. His scholarly activity continued intensely in his later years. In 1988, he published William Hogarth: The Analysis of Beauty and The Modern Project of Art, the final, decisive legacy of his passionate, prospective vision of art and the world. [wikipedia] <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Filiberto MennaCritica della criticaFeltrinelli, Milan, 1980 courtesy Stefano Giovanazziaac archivio arte contemporanea roveretocaa contemporary art archive roveretovia Vittorio Veneto 5, Rovereto (TN) Italia One of 160,000 documents Filiberto Menna (Salerno, 11 November 1926 \u2013 Rome, 9 February 1988) was an Italian art historian, scholar of modern art, university professor at the University of Salerno and … <\/p>\n

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