Piero Manzoni is the forerunner and inexhausted “travelling messenger” of this new geography of relations. His continuous journeys and activity mark an authentic European style. A new artistic conception due to reform art’s future worldwide. A new transnational vision is established, by all means an alternative vision compared to North American art, but also dissimilar to the Parisian milieu. ZERO operates according to a new geography, it travels through Milan, Rome, Lausanne, Bern, Basel, Düsseldorf, Munich, Frankfurt, London, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Anvers, Copenhagen and Zagabria. Following different lines and standards and producing a massive epistolary exchange, this group of artists establish new creative and at the same time methodical guidelines, as well as new figures and new places that inexorably adopt such guidelines, thus amplifying and spreading their effects.
Retracing Manzoni’s European artistic activity as well as his closest authors has been possible thanks to an accurate research on bibliographies, documentaries and evidences. Moreover, strictly related to this movement, the book explains a series of important international partnerships between Italy and Europe brought to light through unpublished documents (vintage pictures, original letters, etc.) which form a further contribution on Manzoni’s work and twentieth century art.