A New Language: Salvatore Meo’s Found Object Assemblages, 1948–1978
Salvatore Meo (1914–2004) is a significant but largely undiscovered assemblage artist, who was inspired by the discarded materials he found in the streets and markets of postwar Rome. In constructing paintings and sculptures from humble objects, he challenged his viewers to think expansively about the nature of art and its relation to our everyday lives.
Born in Philadelphia, Meo trained at the Tyler School of Art and the Barnes Foundation. In the late Thirties, he worked in the experimental print studio Atelier 17 with Stanley William Hayter, creating soft-ground etchings impressed with found materials. The novel nature of these prints helped him to win a Tiffany Grant in 1949. In 1951, he permanently relocated to Rome where he became involved with a group of avant-garde thinkers including Alberto Burri, Giuseppe Capogrossi, Ettore Colla, and Emilio Villa, who sought to explore new approaches to artmaking.
His artistic circle in Rome was keenly interested in establishing a new visual language in the aftermath of World War II. Seeking to distance themselves from the horrors of recent history, their art reflected on the primitive mark making and votive objects produced by ancient humans. Meo’s colleagues argued that since the dawn of time the central role of the artist had been to conceive of new ways to think about and approach the world. Meo’s found object assemblages offered one of the most radical meditations on this idea by proposing that art could be found in the everyday environment. He began to make abstract paintings and sculptures from cardboard, string, wood, and metal, transforming urban detritus into a pioneering new form of expression.
Meo’s groundbreaking assemblages helped foster an open-minded creative environment in postwar Italy. His work paved the way for the next generation of avant-garde artists (Arte Povera, Nouveau Realisme, New Dada), who radically expanded on the idea of art and its relation to one’s environment. The exhibition will confront issues of reclamation, communication, and visual language, asking the viewer to consider the ways in which art can be found in the modest and unassuming corners of our day-to-day lives.