Concrete in the eyes of Uncini, Smithson and Kiefer: art of building, geological nature, decaying material

Abstract

The generation of artists that were active in the ‘50s and ‘60s represents a significant contribution to the awareness of the alternative expressive potential of building materials, such as concrete. For these artists, engineering works, a visit to construction sites, and manufacturing processes of materials all provided references, artistic rather than technical, for the manipulation of materials. The paper analyses the works of artists such as Giuseppe Uncini, Robert Smithson and Anselm Kiefer, highlighting how, just at the height of international architectural brutalism, artists of the younger generation were looking for models for the use of reinforced concrete as a powerfully metaphorical material. Those models were not only the architecture built by Pier Luigi Nervi, Le Corbusier and Louis I. Kahn, but also works in concrete which can be considered almost ancestral or, in any case, primeval as they were not yet contaminated by artistic manipulations. Dams, bunkers, simple buildings, quarries, ruins, and building sites became models of primeval concrete forms, far from the pattern of the skeleton structure that had emerged in the international style. During the twentieth century, and up to the present day, several books and manuals dedicated to the materials of sculpture have been published. Despite this valuable literature, the question of an analysis focused on concrete as the preferred material of sculpture remains marginal. The paper takes into account the peculiarities of technical and shaping processes of concrete, to study the creative relationships between conception and realization, idea and matter. The paper proposes an unprecedented study of the creative processes for the genesis of certain contemporary forms, which are common in sculpture and architecture, and can contribute to a better understanding of the “nature” of concrete as “liquid stone”. Key word: Sculpure, Aechitecture, Concrete, Uncini, Smithson, Kiefer