Contemporary Art Criticism, Interviews, Essays and Visual Politics
Roberto Crippa was an Italian postwar artist and one of the major figures associated with Spatialism. Emerging within the Milanese avant-garde around Lucio Fontana, Crippa developed an intensely personal interpretation of space based on movement, energy and the instability of the pictorial surface.
He became particularly known for his Spirali, dynamic compositions in which looping and intersecting lines transform the canvas into a field of trajectories, suggesting orbital movement, flight and expanding forces rather than conventional depth. His interest in space therefore differed significantly from Fontana’s physical perforations and cuts, revealing the diversity that existed within Spatialism itself.
Crippa later expanded his practice through cork, metal, wood and other heterogeneous materials, pushing painting toward assemblage and a more explicitly physical relationship with the object. His work occupies an important position within the transformation of Italian art after World War II, connecting Spatialism with material experimentation, abstraction and the broader redefinition of painting during the 1950s and 1960s.
This tag gathers articles, critical essays and references related to Roberto Crippa, his Spirali, his contribution to Spatialism and his place within Italian and European postwar art.
Gianni Dova with Roberto Crippa, Tancredi Parmeggiani and Carlo Cardazzo, 1952. Courtesy Gianni Dova Archive. Spatialism Has a Fontana Problem Lucio Fontana was the greatest artist to emerge from Spatialism. He may also be the
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