Nuclear art

Description

Nuclear art was an artistic approach developed by some artists and painters, after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In the days, weeks and years following the atomic bombing of Japan, trained and untrained artists who survived the bombings began documenting their experiences in artworks. The U.S. occupation authorities controlled the release of photographs and film footage of these events, while photographers and artists on the ground continued to produce visual representations of the effects of nuclear warfare. Photographer Yōsuke Yamahata began taking photographs of Nagasaki on August 10, 1945 (the day after the bombing), however his photographs were not released to the public until 1952 when the magazine Asahi Gurafu published them. Read more ↗

Key Artists

Enrico Baj
Co-founder of the Arte Nucleare movement in Milan in 1951; authored manifestos against academicism and created heavy-water enamels and polimaterial collages depicting mushroom clouds and devastated atomic landscapes.
Sergio Dangelo
Co-founder of the Arte Nucleare movement alongside Baj; co-authored the 1951 manifesto and promoted spontaneous, automatic painting techniques reflecting the disintegration of matter in the atomic age.
Piero Manzoni
Prominent Italian avant-garde figure who signed the 1957 'Contro lo stile' (Against Style) manifesto and exhibited with the Nucleari before evolving toward his conceptual Achromes and radical critiques of art commodities.
Gianni Dova
Early Milanese adherent of Arte Nucleare who utilized fluid enamel paints and automatic drippings to evoke cellular mutations, monstrous organisms, and primeval atomic forces.
Joe Colombo
Italian painter and visionary designer who participated in the Arte Nucleare movement during the 1950s, creating biomorphic and atomic-inspired paintings before revolutionizing modular space-age industrial design.
Voltolino Fontani
Founder of the parallel Eaismo (Era Atomica) movement in Livorno in 1948 who painted nuclear fragmentation and atomic dynamism, directly preceding and inspiring Milanese Nuclear Art.

Famous Artworks

Dinamica di assestamento e mancata stasi
Voltolino Fontani · 1948
Private Collection - Oil on canvas
Manifesto della Pittura Nucleare
Enrico Baj and Sergio Dangelo · 1951
Galleria Apollo, Milan - Manifesto text and exhibition
Contro lo stile (Against Style)
Enrico Baj, Sergio Dangelo, and Piero Manzoni · 1957
Galleria San Fedele, Milan - Manifesto
Fire! Fire!
Enrico Baj · 1963
Tate, London - Oil, enamel, meccano, and broken glass on fabric

Fun Facts

In their foundational 1951 manifesto, the Arte Nucleare founders declared that forms disintegrate under atomic forces and that 'the truth no longer belongs to us; it is inside the atom.'
↗ Source: tate.org.uk
Enrico Baj developed an experimental medium he dubbed 'heavy water' (l'acqua pesante) - an emulsion of oil paint, enamel, and distilled water that created spontaneous, crater-like cellular reactions across the canvas when applied.
↗ Source: tate.org.uk

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