The theme of both the catalogue and the exhibition is the world of art from 1955 to 1965 as seen from the viewpoint of those popular Italian magazines and newspapers whose readership reached its zenith in those years, films and television programmes.
What emerges from these magazines is a very different view of contemporary art and its protagonists than that offered by the critics. “New” art and artistic innovation emerged to face a somewhat doubtful public, while in the mass media artistic themes – from big exhibitions, followed by the inevitable controversies, to portrait painting, which never goes out of style, and coverage of artists and their world frequently intertwines with the world of celebrities, cinema and television.
