I used to think art history moved in straight lines—minimalism killed expressionism, conceptual art murdered painting, and that was that.
Turns out the story’s messier than I thought, especially when you look at what happened in Italy around 1979. That’s when critic Achille Bonito Oliva coined the term “Transavanguardia,” and suddenly five painters—Sandro Chia, Francesco Clemente, Enzo Cucchi, Nicola De Maria, and Mimmo Paladino—were dragging figuration back from the dead. The thing is, figurative painting hadn’t really disappeared; it had just been academically unfashionable for decades, buried under layers of conceptual art, minimalism, and arte povera. These Italian artists didn’t care. They started painting mythological figures, fragmented bodies, symbolic landscapes—stuff that felt almost embarrassingly emotional after years of cool, intellectual distance. Bonito Oliva called it a “nomadic” approach, which basically meant they cherry-picked from art history without worrying about consistency or theoretical purity. Byzantine mosaics, German Expressionism, Futurism, even graffiti—everything was fair game.
The timing mattered more than people sometimes admit. Italy in the late 1970s was politically exhausted—the Years of Lead had left everyone drained—and the art world was ready for something that felt human again, even if that humanity was weird and fragmented. Wait—maybe “ready” isn’t the right word. Some critics hated Transavanguardia immediately, calling it regressive or market-driven.
Here’s the thing: the movement spread faster than anyone expected, and not just in Italy.
When International Galleries Started Paying Attention to Emotional Figuration Again
By 1980, Transavanguardia was showing up in major exhibitions across Europe and the United States. The 1980 Venice Biennale featured the movement prominently, and suddenly galleries in New York, London, and Berlin were scrambling to represent these artists. Clemente moved to New York and became part of the downtown scene alongside Basquiat and Haring. Chia’s massive canvases—these baroque, theatrical things with muscular figures and surreal narratives—started selling for serious money. I guess it makes sense that the art market loved Transavanguardia; painting is easier to collect than performance art or installations that require a whole room.
But there was something else happening too.
The movement gave permission for a whole generation of painters to be expressive again without apology. German Neo-Expressionists like Anselm Kiefer and Georg Baselitz were doing similar things around the same time, and American artists were rediscovering figuration through different routes. Transavanguardia wasn’t the only force behind this shift, but it was definately one of the loudest. Bonito Oliva was brilliant at promoting the movement—writing manifestos, organizing exhibitions, getting international press. He positioned Transavanguardia as a rejection of avant-garde dogma, which irritated purists but resonated with artists who were tired of being told what they couldn’t paint. The irony is that “trans-avant-garde” literally means “beyond the avant-garde,” yet the movement was deeply aware of avant-garde history. These weren’t naive painters; they knew exactly what they were reacting against.
Why Mythological Symbolism and Fragmented Narratives Became the Movement’s Visual Language
Cucchi painted desolate landscapes with skulls and fires. Paladino made silent, totemic figures that felt ancient and modern simultaneously. Clemente’s self-portraits morphed into strange, multi-faced beings. There was no unified style—honestly, calling it a “movement” sometimes feels generous—but there was a shared sensibility. Emotion over concept. Intuition over system. Messiness over precision.
I’ve seen Transavanguardia dismissed as a brief commercial fad, which misses the point entirely. Yes, the market embraced it. Yes, some of the work hasn’t aged well. But the movement cracked open a door that had been sealed for roughly two decades, give or take. It reminded people that painting could be subjective, narrative, even theatrical without being kitsch. That you could reference Caravaggio and comic books in the same canvas and not worry about academic consistency. The influence shows up in unexpected places—contemporary painters like Neo Rauch or Cecily Brown owe something to that permission structure, even if they’d never call themselves Transavanguardists.
By the mid-1980s, the movement had fractured, which was probably inevitable given how loosely it was defined in the first place. The five core artists went in different directions. Clemente kept exploring mysticism and self-portraiture. Chia’s work got quieter. Cucchi retreated into increasingly personal symbolism. But the broader shift they’d helped catalyze—the return of expressive figuration as a legitimate mode—stuck around. Art schools stopped treating representational painting like a reactionary embarrassment. Galleries started showing figurative work without defensive justifications.
Anyway, maybe that’s the real legacy: not the specific paintings, but the permission to be emotionally messy again.
