Arte interplanetaria: alla ricerca di una formula universale tra scienza e fantascienza

Abstract

The paper analyses the fourth and last issue of Il Gesto, edited by Enrico Baj and entirely devoted to interplanetary art. The issue concluded almost a decade of collaborations and meetings that had opened the Italian scene to the European artistic and literary avant-gardes. After a reconstruction of the way in which Italian media reported on the events following the launch of the Sputnik, the paper places the authors and articles in the context of Cold War anxieties. Looking at coeval newspapers and magazines and at Baj’s personal archive, the paper reveals the links between the nuclear artists and the Space Age imagery (a proper mania for the future), in all its Italian manifestations, from rocketry to science-fiction literature.