In his recent text, The Year 1968 and Visual Arts, the Italian critic, Renato Barilli, said that 1968 marked one of the crucial dates in the history of contemporary art. Barilli claimed that any future consideration of art would have to refer to the situation pre-1968 or post-1968.¹

The influence of a milieu on the emergence of different movements in 20th century art is a subject of endless debate. Once engaged in a discussion of the pros and cons, it does not take too long before one realises that the forms in modern and contemporary art – and that applies to the earlier periods, as well – have not occurred at random places or random moments; on the contrary, they were created by individuals who lived in concrete historical circumstances, who worked in those circumstances, and who were constructing their identity within a specific geographic, cultural and social area. 

Chrono-History

A number of events that took place between 1966 and 1969 marked crucial stages along the path towards the  dematerialisation of the art object - i.e. a the process which implied a transferral of working methods from the formal onto the cerebral plane... 

The farther we progress into the 1980’s and the artistic period that has been characterised by the processes termed ‘Postmodernism’, ‘trans avant-garde’, ‘Hyper Mannerism’ and so on, the more difficult It has become to decide from which   standpoint we should view the art of the previous decade - the tumultuous 1970's - which represented a period of great change and even greater (though probably only  partially realised) efforts at change, as well as a period of  great aspirations, only some of them fulfilled.