The arts scene during the last three years of the 20th century
was marked by new ventures that drew in leading, and
frequently international, figures. The Schema gallery, founded
in 1972 by Alberto Moretti, Raul Dominguez and Roberto
Cesaroni Venanzi, which closed in 1994, was a reference point
for conceptual art, radical architecture, happenings, and body
and performance art. Between 1973 and 1976, Maria Gloria
Bicocchi set up and supported art/tapes/22, an avant-garde
European video production centre, that drew in conceptual
and Arte Povera artists, musicians and performers and the
young camera operator Bill Viola, allowing them to experiment
with video, such as Agnetti, Boetti, Chia, Chiari, De Dominicis
and Kounellis, as well as foreign artists such as Acconci,
Davis, Jonas and Palestine. In 1974 Mario Mariotti, Paolo
Masi and Maurizio Nannucci set up Zona non profit art space,
for artistic projects. Until 1985 Zona realized exhibitions and
interventions that turned the attention to the region with the
development of an extraordinary international network, as
shown by issues of Exempla and Zona Archives, important
exhibitions and the Fonoteca audio archive set up by Nannucci
in 1977.
