Nanni Balestrini’s path as a
visual artist cannot be separated from his poetic path, where he emerged as a
protagonist of the neo-avant-garde that took shape in Italy over the course of
the 1960s. After his early publications in the mid-1950s (in, among others,
Castellani’s and Manzoni’s Azimuth),
he was part of the group of poets published in 1961 in the anthology I Novissimi, then later participated in
Gruppo 63, along with Renato Barilli, Umberto Eco, Alfredo Giuliani, Edoardo
Sanguineti, Angelo Guglielmi, Gausto Cori, Elio Pagliarini, and Antonio Porta.
Balestrini has always developed his experimental production alongside an
involvement in the life of his time; he was crucial to the birth of the
cultural journals Il Verri, Quindici, Alfabeta and Zoooom. [...]
