Name: MAC Concrete Art Movement
Where: Milan Salto Library
When: October 1948 until 1959
Who: group of avant-garde artists including Enrico Bordoni, Joe Colombo, Regina, Nino Di Salvatore, Gillo Dorfles, Gianni Monnet, Bruno Munari, Luigi Veronesi, Tito Varisco, Carol Rama, Simonetta Vigevani Jung and Lucio Fontana
Why: to revive abstract art in Italy
While Dorflès embodied a trend toward surrealist and biomorphic abstraction, Soldati and Monnet referred more to the concrete art of the 1920s and 1930s, and Munari, a former futurist, pursued work on the playful diversion of objects and design.
This instrumental determination distinguished MAC from other Italian abstraction groups, which aspired only to a renewal of pictorial forms.
The movement quickly recruited new members (Mario Nigro, Ettore Sottsass, Gianni Bertini, Luigi Veronesi, etc.) and led to similar meetings in Turin, Florence, Naples, and Rome.
Although the MAC disbanded in 1959 after the death of Gianni Monnet, its real driving force, its influence was felt in many Italian research projects of the mid-1960s – Gruppo T, Castellani, Manzoni – while Bruno Munari and Sottsass became important figures in design.