Arte-Azione: Pablo Echaurren and Italian Counterculture in the 1970s

Curated by
Ara H. Merjian, NYU
Jacopo Galimberti, art historian

On view:
September 15 – October 24, 2025
Mon-Fri 10-6

In histories of postwar political protest, the events of 1968 hold pride of place in the Italian and international imagination alike. Yet the late 1970s witnessed one of the most significant movements in Italy since World War Two – one which assailed the seemingly inveterate conventions of political affiliation. Intersected by student activism, feminist and LGBTQ critique, and a range of DIY practices – from the underground press and street performances to “free radio” – the 1977 movement shifted the parameters of ideological affinity and their expression in and as culture.

One of the key creative forces behind the Indiani Metropolitani and other countercultural groups in Rome and Bologna, Pablo Echaurren (b. 1951) helped to reconfigure the language of student and social protest in Italy as an illustrator, activist, and scholar. His work over five decades incorporates registers high and low, using comics, collage, caricature, and other means to reprise and transform historical avant-garde tactics borrowed from Futurism and Dada. Alongside his studio work, Echaurren has proven a tireless cultural historian, authoring numerous volumes on the 1977 movement and related countercultural currents, many of them included in this exhibition. Working alongside various collaborators – including his partner, the art historian Claudia Salaris, with whom he directs the Echaurren-Salaris Foundation in Rome – Echaurren embodies the collective efforts of a generation.