Italian art historian Luciano Caramel dies at 87

Luciano Caramel, a prominent Italian art historian specializing in European and Italian abstraction, died in 2022 at age 87. The news was announced on Facebook by critic and journalist Pietro Marino. Born in Como in 1935, Caramel produced numerous studies and curated key exhibitions, notably on the Movimento Italiano di Arte Concreta (MAC), to which he dedicated an important essay in 1984. In 1979, he co-curated with Flavio Caroli the exhibition "Testuale" in Milan, which brought together artists and movements combining images and writing. He served as commissioner for Italy at the 1982 Venice Biennale and also collaborated with the Biennale in 1970. He was commissioner of the Rome Quadriennale in 1993. Caramel was director of the Accademia Albertina di Torino, vice-director at Brera, and professor of modern art history at the University of Lecce (1979-1982). He wrote essays and books on artists including Pino Pascali, Medardo Rosso, and Antonio Sant'Elia. Among his notable projects was "Campo Umano" in 1969, an ephemeral public art event in Como. In 2022, the book "Scritti sull'astrattismo in Italia tra le due guerre" was published, edited by Francesco Tedeschi and promoted by CRA.IT, collecting Caramel's writings on abstraction in Italy between the wars, covering artists such as Reggiani, Soldati, Licini, Melotti, Fontana, Veronesi, and the Como group (Radice, Rho, Badiali, Galli) linked to the architectural rationalism of Terragni and Cattaneo.