Abstract

The article analyzes, in seven separate yet cohesive points, the prominent role that the work of Apulian artist Pino Pascali had in Art historian Giorgio de Marchis’s vision of Contemporary Art History. The first part delves into the historical-critical methodology deployed by de Marchis in the groundbreaking essay he penned for Storia dell’arte Italiana, the important encyclopedia published by Einaudi in 1982. This is followed by some remarks on the importance of Pascali’s knowledge of Marcel Duchamp’s poetics, his Roman debut that was anything but ‘pop’, the concept of ‘primordial’ and ephemeral in his Art, and a comparison with two other coeval critical readings, namely those by Giulio Carlo Argan and Palma Bucarelli.