Luciano Caruso, Tabulae barocche, 1967,1983, Pencil and crayon on clothbound folder, paint, staples, mirror foil, ink, silkscreen on paper, 61.5 × 41 cm, Edition of 5
Courtesy of Archivio Conz, Berlin
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Clothbound portfolio folder, with handwritten title in graphite and pastel, containing a silkscreened title page, a silkscreen text piece on Amalfi paper with handwritten notations by the artist from 1983, five unique works comprising handpainting and calligraphy on a repeating silkscreen from the artist's 1967 series "Tabulae Barocche," and a handwritten colophon in graphite.
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Luciano Caruso played an essential role in the development of Italian avant-garde literature. His artistic and critical work stands at the intersection of history and politics, aesthetics and semantics, writing and poetry. He attended the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Naples, specializing in Medieval Aesthetics, an area of study that remained central to his historical and philosophical research over the years. Since the early 1960s, Caruso observed the vibrant cultural milieu of the avant-garde, first and foremost Neapolitan, but also Italian and French at large. During his career, Caruso worked on the conception of multiple Italian avant-garde journals addressing new expressive dimensions of poetry. In 1967, he was co-editor of Linea Sud, together with Stelio Maria Martini and Giovanni Polara. With Martini, a great friend and collaborator, Caruso founded the collective Continuum, bringing together the experiments of several Italian and international authors, such as Emilio Villa, Giuseppe Desiato, Claudio Parmiggiani, François Dufrêne, and Timm Ulrichs. Under this denomination, eponymous folios were published between 1968 and 1970, as well as periodical publications such as Continuazione A/Z. In 1970, Caruso intervened in the paradigmatic bulletin Ana eccetera, followed by the journal Uomini e Ideee and the texts for E/mana/zione, published until 1981. Throughout the 1970s, Caruso’s artistic work focused on the book-object, complex pieces in which sculptural, textual, typographic, and artistic elements intertwine. During this time, apart from moving permanently to Florence, Caruso conducted several critical studies directed at the revaluation of Futurism, editing original anthologies for the publishing houses S.P.E.S. in Florence and Belforte in Livorno. Continuing to survey the evolution of international networks such as Fluxus and Intermedia, Caruso closely collaborated with Dick Higgins from 1976 to 1994. Caruso also promoted important events dedicated to avant-gardes. Examples include the sound poetry festival “Il colpo di Glottide” held in 1980 with the participation of such luminaries as Bernard Heidsieck, Arthur Petronio, and Arrigo Lora-Tottino, and the event “Far libro: libri e pagine d’artista in Italia” at the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Florence in 1989. He also held countless exhibitions, such as those at the Civica Galleria d’Arte Moderna di Gallarate (1993) and the Istituto Italiano degli Studi Filosofici in Naples (2002).
