Italian poet, author and artist (1935–2019)
Nanni Balestrini |
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| Born | (1935-07-02)2 July 1935
Milan, Italy |
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| Died | 19 May 2019(2019-05-19) (aged 83)
Rome, Italy |
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| Occupation | Novelist, essayist, screenwriter |
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| Nationality | Italian |
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| Genre | Novel, essay, screenwriting |
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| Literary movement | Neoavanguardia |
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| Notable works | Vogliamo tutto |
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Nanni Balestrini (2 July 1935 – 19 May 2019) was an Italian experimental poet, author and visual artist of the Neoavanguardia movement.
Context
Nanni Balestrini is associated with the Italian writers' movement Neoavanguardia. He wrote for the magazine Il Verri, founded and co-directed the now-defunct Alfabeta[1][2] and was one of the Italian writers published in the anthology I Novissimi (1961).
Balestrini was born in Milan. During the 1960s, as the group was growing and becoming the Gruppo 63, Balestrini was the editor of their publications. From 1962 to 1972, he was working for Feltrinelli, cooperating with the Marsilio [it] publishers and editing some issues of the Cooperativa Scrittori. In 1968, Balestrini was co-founder of the Potere Operaio political group and in 1976 was an important supporter of the Autonomia Operaia. In 1979, he was accused of membership in a guerilla group and fled to Paris and later Germany.
Balestrini became known by a larger public thanks to his first novel We Want Everything (Vogliamo tutto, 1971). It describes the struggles and conflicts in the car factory of FIAT. In the following years, the social movements of his time continued to be his subject. With the book The Unseen, he created a literary monument for the "Generation of 1977". It shows the atmosphere of rapid social change during these years, concretising in house occupations, the creation of free radios and more, and also shows the considerable repression by the state of these movements. Other important works by Balestrini include; I Furiosi, dedicated to the football supporters culture of the AC Milan, and The Editor, dealing with Giangiacomo Feltrinelli. Especially in his book The Golden Horde, co-written with Primo Moroni, his proximity to operaismo is obvious. His final novel published while he was still living, Sandokan (2004) deals with the Camorra in Casal di Principe.
His experimental "novel" Tristano, was conceived to be read by each reader differently, since each sentence is randomly shuffled. Originally conceived in 1966, it had to await publication till the age of print-on-demand, but critic Tim Martin found one of its 109 trillion versions "drifting, impressionistic and oddly compelling."[3][4]
