Metacosa Movement

Metacosa is a group of Italian painters founded in the late 1970s, whose first exhibition opened in Brescia in 1979 under the presentation of the critic Roberto Tassi. Its members - Giuseppe Bartolini, Giuseppe Biagi, Gianfranco Ferroni, Bernardino Luino, Sandro Luporini, Lino Mannocci and Giorgio Tonelli - pursued a figurative art of poetic intensity, carefully constructed in the studio rather than improvised. As Tassi wrote, each painter had his own light: the shared poetics involved no shared style or poetry, and that variety within one idea was the fascination of the exhibition. Later shows followed in Milan, Viareggio, Bergamo and Vicenza, and the group stayed with patient figurative painting while fashions changed around it. In 2004 the critic Philippe Daverio revisited the phenomenon in the Milan exhibition Metanoid Phenomenology.

Defining characteristics

• Figurative painting: figures and objects treated as vehicles of mood and memory
• Poetic intensity over reportage - quiet, introspective subjects
• Carefully calculated technique: measured brushwork and studied studio construction
• Light as each painter's individual signature rather than a group doctrine
• Varied idioms united by a shared idea instead of a manifesto look

Key figures

• Sandro Luporini (b. 1930) — Painter and writer; founding member of the Metacosa group
• Lino Mannocci (1945-2021) — Painter, printmaker and writer; founding member of the group
• Bernardino Luino (b. 1951) — Painter and etcher; founding member of the group

Sources

• Metacosa Movement - Wikipedia encyclopedia

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