Baj, Pascali, Marotta. Nuclear materials between nature and artifice

Abstract

This essay explores the relationship between art, matter and modernity through a comparison between Enrico Baj, Pino Pascali and Gino Marotta. Starting from Baj's experience of nuclearism, with its tensions between play and civic engagement, the text investigates the influence of Futurism and the historical avant-garde in the context of Italian research between the 1950s and 1960s. The analysis focuses on the experimental use of materials and the dialectic between nature and artifice, highlighting the central role of play as a critical and creative form. Through a comparison with the “environmental sculpture” and “new artificial ecology” of the 1960s, the essay outlines a line of continuity between seemingly distant generations, united by a common imaginative and radical vision of the work of art.