ARCHITECTURE: Superstudio 50
Superstudio was an architecture firm, founded in 1966 in Florence, Italy by Adolfo Natalini and Cristiano Toraldo di Francia, later joined by Gian Piero Frassinelli, Roberto and Alessandro Magris and Alessandro Poli, Superstudio was one of the most influential groups of the world avant-garde scene during the ‘60s and ‘70s. Superstudio’s research focused on the meaning of architecture in the age of a “Society of Spectacle”, in its many forms of representation.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: MAXXI Archive
Superstudio was founded in Florence in December 1966, on the occasion of the exhibition Superarchitettura, at the Jolly 2 art gallery in Pistoia. Among the initiators of the so-called “Radical architecture”, Superstudio undertook a painstaking analysis of objects, industrial design and architecture. 50 years from its foundation, MAXXI is devoting a major retrospective to the group entitled “SUPERSTUDIO 50” , this exhibition brings together and presents r 200 pieces, ranging from installations to objects, from graphic works to photographs and through to publications covering the entire career and development of the group. On presentation, among other works, the most important drawings, photomontages and installations from “The Continuous Monument” series (1969), the “Architectural Histograms” (1969-70) and “The Twelve Ideal Cities” (1971), projects though which, the group demonstrated the possibilities and the limits of architecture understood as instrument of a critique of society. Alongside this material, will be installations such as “The Wife of Lot”, presented at the Venice Biennale in 1978 and the entrance to the Superarchitettura exhibition from 1966 and design objects. Part of the exhibition is devoted to the group’s videos, including the previously unseen “Continuous Monument”, a project from 1969 of which only the storyboard existed and which has been produced by MAXXI for this exhibition with direction by the videomaker Lucio La Pietra. In 1970 Superstudio, together with the 9999 group, started the Separate School for Conceptual Expanded Architecture (S-SPACE), a didactic organization dedicated to the exchange of information. From 1971 to 1973 Superstudio worked in the field of operative criticism, producing a series of 5 films focused on The Fundamental Acts: Life, Educations, Ceremony, Love and Death, (1972-73), an attempt towards the philosophical and anthropological re-founding of architecture. The films are also presented in the exhibition. Superstudio’s most ambitious attempt to tackle the relationship between life and design, which while on the one hand proposes an anthropological and philosophical refoundation of architecture, on the other progressively free the individual energies of the group which officially broke up in the early ‘80s. The retrospective therefore comprises material such as posters and publications. The exhibition is moreover completed by the work of a number of artists who have given specific interpretations of Superstudio’s work, from the videos of Hironaka & Suib and Rene Daalder, through to the documentary research of the photographer Stefano Graziani.
Info: Conceived by Adolfo Natalini, Cristiano Toraldo di Francia and Gian Piero Frassinelli, with the curator Gabriele Mastrigli, Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo (MAXXI), Via Guido Reni 4A, Rome, Duration: 21/4-4/9/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri & Sun 11:00-19:00, Sat 11:00-22:00, www.fondazionemaxxi.it
