Transavanguardia

Transavanguardia (Transavantgarde) was an Italian neo-expressionist group that emerged in the late 1970s and became one of the key manifestations of a return to painting after the dominance of conceptual and minimalist art. The term was coined by the critic Achille Bonito Oliva, who grouped together the painters Sandro Chia, Francesco Clemente, Enzo Cucchi, Mimmo Paladino and Nicola De Maria. The Transavantgarde rejected the idea of a linear modernist "progress" and proclaimed the artist's freedom to draw freely from art history, mythology, regional traditions and personal imagery. Their works were marked by saturated colour, figuration, expressive brushwork and open sensuality. Together with the German Neue Wilden and American neo-expressionism, the movement signalled the painting revival of the 1980s. Its assertion of the artist's right to memory, emotion and eclectic quotation proved attuned to the postmodern age, including the search for a new figuration in Eastern Europe and Ukraine.