The Nuclear art was an artistic tendency developed by some European artists and painters, after the bombings of Hiroshima

Hiroshima

is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture, and the largest city in the Chūgoku region of western Honshu, the largest island of Japan. It became best known as the first city in history to be destroyed by a nuclear weapon when the United States Army Air Forces dropped an atomic bomb on it at 8:15 A.M...

 and Nagasaki

Nagasaki

is the capital and the largest city of Nagasaki Prefecture on the island of Kyushu in Japan. Nagasaki was founded by the Portuguese in the second half of the 16th century on the site of a small fishing village, formerly part of Nishisonogi District...

.

Conception and origins

In 1948, the artistic movement of Eaismo

Eaismo

Eaismo was a 20th century avant-garde movement born in Italy in 1948, founded by the painter, Voltolino Fontani, who was the main rappresentant of it, with the poet Marcello Landi and the literary critic Guido Favati....

, published a manifesto illustrating some aspects of the atomic age

Atomic Age

The Atomic Age, also known as the Atomic Era, is a phrase typically used to delineate the period of history following the detonation of the first nuclear bomb Trinity on July 16, 1945...

 and, at the same time, criticizing the industrial use of nuclear energy

Nuclear power

Nuclear power is the use of sustained nuclear fission to generate heat and electricity. Nuclear power plants provide about 6% of the world's energy and 13–14% of the world's electricity, with the U.S., France, and Japan together accounting for about 50% of nuclear generated electricity...

.

It was a movement of poetry and painting, founded by the Italian artist Voltolino Fontani

Voltolino Fontani

Voltolino Fontani was an Italian painter. He was an artist who contributed to introduce the espression Atomic age in the European culture...

, aiming to balance the role of men in a society upset by the danger of nuclear radiation.
The artistic group was strengthened by the poet Marcello Landi and by the literary critic Guido Favati.
In 1948 Voltolino Fontani depicted the disintegration and fragmentation of an atom

Atom

The atom is a basic unit of matter that consists of a dense central nucleus surrounded by a cloud of negatively charged electrons. The atomic nucleus contains a mix of positively charged protons and electrically neutral neutrons...

 on canvas, by creating the artwork: Dinamica di assestamento e mancata stasi.

In 1951 the painters Enrico Baj

Enrico Baj

Enrico Baj was an Italian artist and writer on art. Many of his works show an obsession with nuclear war. He created prints, sculptures but especially collage. He was close to the surrealist and dada movements, and was later associatied with CoBrA. As an author he has been described as a leading...

 and Sergio Dangelo created the Arte nucleare movement, criticizing and putting the repetitiveness of painting (as an artistic and commercial phenomenon) in discussion.
Plenty of Italian artists, in Milan

Milan

Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...

 and Naples

Naples

Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...

, and foreigners like Yves Klein

Yves Klein

Yves Klein was a French artist considered an important figure in post-war European art. He is the leading member of the French artistic movement of Nouveau réalisme founded in 1960 by the art critic Pierre Restany...

, Asger Jorn

Asger Jorn

Asger Oluf Jorn was a Danish painter, sculptor, ceramic artist, and author. He was a founding member of the avant-garde movement COBRA and the Situationist International...

, Arman

Arman

Arman was a French-born American artist. Born Armand Pierre Fernandez in Nice, France, Arman is a painter who moved from using the objects as paintbrushes to using them as the painting itself...

, Antonio Saura

Antonio Saura

Antonio Saura was a Spanish artist and writer, one of the major post-war painters to emerge in Spain in the fifties whose work has marked several generations of artists and whose critical voice is often remembered.-Biography:He began painting and writing in 1947 in Madrid while suffering from...

 joined the movement. The main representative of the arte nucleare movement was Piero Manzoni

Piero Manzoni

Piero Manzoni was an Italian artist best known for his ironic conceptual art. Influenced by the work of Yves Klein, his own work anticipated, and directly influenced, the work of a generation of younger Italian artists brought together by the critic Germano Celant in the first Arte Povera...

, who in this context, for the first time in his life, put his talent in evidence.

Unlike Eaismo, recommending artists to pursue painting values (and poetry), the arte nucleare movement tried to promote a new form of art in which painting was marginalized.

In the meantime, Spanish painter Salvador Dalì

Salvador Dalí

Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....

 published the Mystical manifesto (1951), putting catholic mysticism and nuclear themes together.
In this period Dalì created artworks like Idillio atomico (1945) and Leda Atomica

Leda Atomica

Leda Atomica is a painting by Salvador Dalí, made in 1949. The picture depicts Leda, the mythological queen of Sparta, with the swan. Leda is a frontal portrait of Dalí's wife, Gala, who is seated on a pedestal with a swan suspended behind and to her left. Different objects such as a book, a set...

 (1949).

External links

• :it:Pittura Nucleare The Italian page for the arte nucleare
• :it:Era atomica The Italian page for the atomic age