Editing Pop art (section)

==Italy==
[[File:Olivetti-Valentine.jpg|thumb|The [[Olivetti Valentine]] designed by [[Ettore Sottsass]] with Perry A. King and Albert Leclerc]]
In Italy, by 1964 pop art was known and took different forms, such as the "Scuola di Piazza del Popolo" in Rome, with pop artists such as [[Mario Schifano]], [[Franco Angeli]], [[Giosetta Fioroni]], [[Tano Festa]], [[Claudio Cintoli]], and some artworks by [[Piero Manzoni]], [[Lucio Del Pezzo]], [[Mimmo Rotella]] and [[Valerio Adami]].

Italian pop art originated in 1950s culture – the works of the artists [[Enrico Baj]] and [[Mimmo Rotella]] to be precise, rightly considered the forerunners of this scene. In fact, it was around 1958–1959 that Baj and Rotella abandoned their previous careers (which might be generically defined as belonging to a ''non-representational genre'', despite being thoroughly post-Dadaist), to catapult themselves into a new world of images, and the reflections on them, which was springing up all around them. Rotella's torn posters showed an ever more figurative taste, often explicitly and deliberately referring to the great icons of the times. Baj's compositions were steeped in contemporary ''kitsch'', which turned out to be a "gold mine" of images and the stimulus for an entire generation of artists.

The novelty came from the new visual panorama, both inside "domestic walls" and out-of-doors. Cars, road signs, television, all the "new world", everything can belong to the world of art, which itself is new. In this respect, Italian pop art takes the same ideological path as that of the international scene. The only thing that changes is the iconography and, in some cases, the presence of a more critical attitude toward it. Even in this case, the prototypes can be traced back to the works of Rotella and Baj, both far from neutral in their relationship with society. Yet this is not an exclusive element; there is a long line of artists, including [[Gianni Ruffi]], [[Roberto Barni]], [[Silvio Pasotti]], [[Umberto Bignardi]], and [[Claudio Cintoli]], who take on reality as a toy, as a great pool of imagery from which to draw material with disenchantment and frivolity, questioning the traditional linguistic role models with a renewed spirit of "let me have fun" à la [[Aldo Palazzeschi]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.comune.modena.it/galleria/exhibitions/past-exhibitions/2005/pop-art-italia-1958-1968-1 |title=Pop Art Italia 1958–1968 — Galleria Civica |website=Comune.modena.it |access-date=2015-12-30}}</ref>
[[File:Fallen Astronaut.jpg|left|thumb|180x180px|Paul Van Hoeydonck's ''[[Fallen Astronaut]]'']]