Vatican Museums

During the 1960s artists, sensitive to the historical context and to social and cultural changes, came up with new visual hypotheses for interpreting the world, and vocabulary hitherto foreign to the figurative lexicon began to enter into use. Provocations, play, and interest in science thus became substantial elements in some of the decade’s most important currents. The cinematic and visual research of the Venezuelan Jesus-Rafael Soto and the technical and procedural experimentation of Hans Hartung form part of this tendency. The juxtaposition of chronologically distant works, such as those of the American Max Cole and the African El Anatsui, is intended to draw the observer’s attention to the persistence of common elements despite the diverse motivations which gave rise to the works.