Duke University Press Marshall Plan Modernism - Italian Postwar Abstraction

Marshall Plan Modernism examines how Italian abstract artists responded to postwar transformation through radical formal innovation. Jaleh Mansoor's scholarly analysis focuses on Lucio Fontana, Alberto Burri, and Piero Manzoni, demonstrating how their monochromatic and procedurally violent approaches-from Fontana's slit canvasses to Burri's burnt plastics and Manzoni's achromes-functioned as indices of social transition rather than trauma metaphors. By rejecting metaphorical readings, Mansoor anchors these artistic interventions in painting's material history and economic contexts, revealing how abstract art broke decisively with fascist-associated futurism. This Duke University Press publication offers art historians and students of modernism a rigorous reconsideration of how abstraction became a vehicle for cultural and aesthetic renewal in postwar Italy.