The origins Paolo Della Grazia got interested in the world of art at the half of the 1960s. By frequenting the San Fedele Cultural Center of
Milan he came to know the work of the Nuova Figurazione
art movement (composed of Fernando De Filippi, Paolo Baratella, Giangiacomo Spadari and Umberto Mariani) and acquired some of their works at the Studio Santandrea directed by Gianfranco Bellora. There he met artist
Ugo Carrega, who had theorized in 1967 the New Writing, an experimental form of writing that associates signs of different extraction, and then had founded the research centers
Centro Suolo,
Centro Tool, and in 1974 the
Mercato del Sale (Salt Market). Della Grazia became a
patron for Carrega, acquiring for the
Mercato del Sale a new venue in Via Orti in Milan. Della Grazia moved his whole collection, that had become much larger through the years and included artworks, books and documents about any form of artistic expression that features the use of the word and the sign, to the same venue in Via Orti. The collection included works of
visual poetry,
concrete poetry,
Lettrism,
Fluxus, and complete bibliographies of
Ezra Pound,
James Joyce, and
E. E. Cummings, authors in which Della Grazia identified the origins of verbo-visual experimentation.
The foundation On 24 May 1988, Della Grazia founded the Associazione culturale per lo Scritturalismo (Cultural Association for Scripturalism), that after a few months acquired the name Archivio di Nuova Scrittura (Archive of New Writing), clearly influenced by Carrega's
poetics. The office of the ANS was in Via Orti, in the same building of the
Mercato del Sale, Della Grazia was president of the association, and Carrega was the director. The collection was exhibited in the venue, and the inauguration featured Rossana Bossaglia,
Gillo Dorfles, and Lea Vergine.
The 1990s . In April 1990 the Archive exhibited
Sei lirici della poesia visuale internazionale (
Six Lyrists of International Visual Poetry), including works by
Alain Arias-Misson,
Ugo Carrega, Carlfriedrich Claus,
Ian Hamilton Finlay,
Tom Phillips, and Shohachiro Takahashi. The exhibition was then moved to the Cairoli College of the
University of Pavia from 24 January to 7 February 1991, in collaboration with Marco Fraccaro. The following exhibition was
Poesia concreta in Brasile (
Concrete Poetry in Brazil), featuring works by
Brazilian poets
Augusto and
Haroldo de Campos, and
Décio Pignatari, members of the Noigandres group. On 1 June 1993 the new exhibition
Linguaggio/immagine (
Language/Image), curated by Adriano Altamira, opened at the ANS. It featured works by Vincenzo Accame, Irma Black, Vincenzo Ferrari,
Ketty La Rocca, Arrigo Lora Totino,
Magdalo Mussio,
Maurizio Nannucci, Anna Oberto, Luca Maria Patella,
Lamberto Pignotti, Sarenco, Adriano Spatola, and Luigi Tola. The exhibition was thought as a complement to the 1993
Venice Biennale, which was showing the works of nine artists of the ANS collection:
Nanni Balestrini,
Ugo Carrega,
Giuseppe Chiari, Emilio Isgrò,
Eugenio Miccini, Martino Oberto, Franco Vaccari,
Patrizia Vicinelli, and
Emilio Villa.
Linguaggio/immagine also included works by
Piero Manzoni,
Emilio Scanavino, Vincenzo Agnetti,
Alighiero Boetti, and several young artists such as Maurizio Arcangeli, Mariella Bettineschi, Gianni Gangai, Francesco La Fosca, and Alessandro Traina. From 28 February to 30 March 1994 the ANS exhibited
Una colonna un bar una voce (
A Column a Coffee Shop a Voice), organized in collaboration with the
Venice Biennale. It exhibited the works by
Nanni Balestrini, Franco Vaccari, and Patrizia Vicinelli that had been selected for the Biennale. The following exhibition was
Oggetti di poesia (
Objects of Poetry), dedicated to
Emilio Villa.
Lo spazio della scrittura (
The Space of Writing), exhibited in the same year, included works by Vincenzo Accame,
Nanni Balestrini,
Irma Blank,
Ugo Carrega, Luciano Caruso, Corrado D'Ottavi, Emilio Isgrò,
Ketty La Rocca, Stelio Maria Martini,
Eugenio Miccini,
Magdalo Mussio, Anna Oberto, Martino Oberto, Luca Maria Patella,
Lamberto Pignotti, Sarenco, Adriano Spatola, and Franco Vaccari. It was shown in
Paris,
France from 5 May to 25 May 1994, then in
Lille from 31 May to 22 June, and finally at the Ignaz and Mischa Epper Foundation in
Ascona,
Switzerland from 30 July to 4 September 1994. A
round table was also organized, featuring
Nanni Balestrini,
Paolo Fabbri, and
Lamberto Pignotti. In 1995 there was a new exhibition about
Terry Atkinson. In the 1990s the ANS organized frequent cultural events, including the series
Parola e immagine (
Word and Image, 1990), with Luciano Caramel, Vittorio Fagone, Vanni Scheiwiller, Emilio Tadini and
Gillo Dorfles,
Alfabeto in libertà (
Alphabet in Freedom, 1991) with
Cesare Segre, Tomaso Kemeny, Rossana Bossaglia and
Tullio Crali, a conference about
Ezra Pound with Kemeny and Scheiwiller (1993), and a series of meetings about
Futurism featuring Bossaglia, Caramel, Claudia Salaris, Enrico Crispolti, and Anty Pansera (1995).
The transfer to Mart and Museion At the end of the 1990s Della Grazia noticed that the preservation and administration of the Archive were becoming too complicated and expensive to be managed by one person. Advised by Francesco Conz, he asked Pier Luigi Siena and Andreas Hapkmeyer of the
Museion of
Bozen to host the collection in their museum. However, the Museion did not have enough space for the entire ANS collection, so Della Grazia decided to involve Gabriella Belli, director of the
Mart museum of
Trento and
Rovereto. The collection was then split, the Museion kept a larger part of the artworks, and the Mart kept some artworks and the whole archives and library of the ANS. In October 1998 Della Grazia made an agreement with Mart, and in February 1999 the archives and library were moved to the new venue. The ANS archives include, apart from the internal archive of the association, the Fraccaro-Carrega
fonds containing the papers of art collector Marco Fraccaro and visual poet
Ugo Carrega. The library of the ANS, preserved at the Mart museum, includes more than 10,000 volumes, among them 600
artist's books and hundreds of
futurist first editions, and 500 art
magazines including about 100 international artist magazines. It also includes essays about the
history of writing, books about
visual poetry,
avant-garde magazines, and several rare works of
Futurism,
Dada,
Surrealism, and other artistic movements. For instance, the Mart hosts the
Libro imbullonato (
Bolted Book) by
Fortunato Depero (1927),
Chimismi lirici (
Lyrical Chemism) by
Ardengo Soffici (1915), and the
Litolatte by Tullio d'Albisola and
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. The Mart also preserves drawings and graphical artworks by artists such as
Eugenio Miccini, Emilio Isgrò,
Lamberto Pignotti, Anna Oberto, Martino Oberto, Vincenzo Ferrari,
Magdalo Mussio, Rolando Mignani, Franco Vaccari, Walter Valentini, Alain Arias-Misson, Giuseppe Desiato, Alik Cavaliere, Emilio Tadini, Luca Maria Patella,
Emilio Villa, and
Giovanna Sandri. The ANS collection hosted by the
Museion includes about 2,000 works by exponents of
concrete and
visual poetry, such as
Shusaku Arakawa,
Terry Atkinson, Franco Vaccari (
conceptual art),
Joseph Beuys,
John Cage,
Giuseppe Chiari,
Dick Higgins,
Ben Vautier,
Wolf Vostell,
Robert Watts (
Fluxus).
The 2000s After the transfer, Della Grazia continued to organize exhibitions and research. The books and documents hosted by Mart were lent to
Poesie concrete brasilienne (
Brazilian Concrete Poetry), held in
Marseille,
France, in 2001,
Alfabeto in sogno (
Alphabet in Dreams) in
Reggio Emilia,
Italy in 2002, and ''Propaganda, cultura e mito nell'editoria italiana
(Propaganda, Culture and Myth in Italian Publishing'') held in
Siracusa in 2004. In the same year the
artist's books of ANS were lent to ''Deliberatamente. Il libro d'artista negli anni '60 e '70
(Deliberately. The Artist Book in the 1960s and 1970s
) in Soncino and to Libri taglienti esplosivi luminosi
(Sharp Explosive Bright Books
), held in 2005 in Trento and 2006 in Bozen. In 2006 they were also shown in Bologna at the Primo amore. La passione di un collezionista
(First Love. The Passion of a Collector'') exhibition. On 10 November 2007 the Mart opened the ''La parola nell'arte
(The Word in Art
) exhibition, organized in collaboration with the Museion and curated by a committee headed by Giorgio Zanchetti and composed of Gabriella Belli, Achille Bonito Oliva, Andreas Hapkemeyer, Nicoletta Boschiero, Paola Pettenella, Melania Gazzotti, Daniela Ferrari, and Julia Trolp. The exhibition contained more than 800 artworks, both from the Mart and other international collections. On 23 May 2008 the Museion moved to a new building, and director Corinne Diserens curated the exhibition Sguardo periferico & corpo collettivo
(Peripheral Look & Collective Body''), including works by Gianfranco Baruchello,
Joseph Beuys,
Alighiero Boetti,
George Brecht,
Günter Brus,
John Cage, Calvin Sumsion, Paul de Vree, Jakov Dorfmann,
John Heartfield,
Marcel Duchamp,
Arturo Schwarz, Ugo La Pietra,
Piero Manzoni,
Hermann Nitsch, Anna Oberto, Claudio Parmiggiani,
Man Ray, Sarenco,
Cy Twombly, Franco Vaccari,
Ben Vautier,
Robert Watts,
Emmett Williams. In 2013 the Archive started the Verbo Visuale Virtuale project in collaboration with the Bruno Kessler Foundation, with the aim of building a
digital archive of verbo-visual art. This project was made possible by a generous grant from the CARITRO Foundation (Trento, Italy). ==Some artists of the ANS collections==