Nuclear art

Nuclear art is the name for the artistic responses that followed the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945: survivor drawings and photographs made in the shadow of occupation censorship and, in the decade after, a wave of European painting that took the atom as its subject and emblem. Italy produced the earliest programs - Voltolino Fontani's Eaismo manifesto of 1948, Fortunato Depero's 1950 manifesto for nuclear painting and sculpture, and the Movimento Arte Nucleare founded by Enrico Baj and Sergio Dangelo in Milan in 1951, which Piero Manzoni briefly joined. Dalí folded atomic physics into Catholic mysticism, Bernard Lorjou painted his monumental L'Âge atomique, and later artists - from Henry Moore's 1967 Nuclear Energy to contemporary Japanese responses to Fukushima - have kept the theme alive.

Defining characteristics

• Mushroom-cloud, atom, and radiation motifs treated as the era's defining images
• Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic landscapes: blast, ruin, mutation, and disintegration of form
• Fragmented, exploding pictorial space that mirrors atomic disintegration (Eaismo)
• Grotesque, machine-like figures adorned with medals, tassels, and military junk (Baj)
• Documentary immediacy in survivor art: raw drawing and photography recording the bombings' aftermath

Key figures

• Enrico Baj (1924-2003) — Co-founder (1951) of the Movimento Arte Nucleare, maker of nuclear-war collages and grotesque generals
• Sergio Dangelo (1932-2022) — Co-founder of Arte nucleare, whose surreal early paintings fed the movement
• Piero Manzoni (1933-1963) — Early Arte nucleare exhibitor before turning to monochrome and conceptual work
• Salvador Dalí (1904-1989) — Fused atomic physics with Catholic mysticism (Mystical Manifesto, 1951)
• Henry Moore (1898-1986) — Sculptor of Nuclear Energy (1967), the mushroom-cloud/skull marker at the Chicago pile site

Example works

• Leda Atomica — Salvador Dalí (1949)
• Nuclear Energy — Henry Moore (1967)
• Le Vespe — Sergio Dangelo (1954)

Sources

• Nuclear art - Wikipedia encyclopedia

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