«Gestaltung». Percorsi dell'astrazione negli anni Cinquanta: note sulla ricezione di Paul Klee in Italia, 1954-60

The article examines the rereading of Paul Klee’s poetics undertaken in Italy during the second half of the 1950s by both art critics and artists. By analysing texts published by Giulio Carlo Argan and Nello Ponente from 1954 to 1960, as well as artworks by artists associated with the Roman ‘Nuova figurazione’ (New figuration) – in particular Achille Perilli and Gastone Novelli – this study explores how critics’ and artists’ writings – with their lexicon – contributed to the construction of specific historical, theoretical and visual narratives. Rather than approaching Klee’s reception as a purely informative process, the article argues that it functioned as an active site of theoretical and artistic production in post-war Italy. In this context, the concept of Gestaltung, drawn from Klee’s theories of form and figuration, emerges as a central theoretical node, enabling a processual and constructive understanding of form that challenged the prevailing art-historical models of the period.