Nuclear Art: Movimento Arte Nucleare
One of the most notable artistic responses to the atomic bomb was the emergence of the "Nuclear Art" movement, or the Movimento Arte Nucleare. This movement's location was in Italy. It involved artists like Enrico Baj, and Salvador Dali who used techniques such as an automatic approach, abstractionism and realism to create powerful and thought-provoking artworks. Their works often depicted the fragmented and turbulent nature of the post-atomic world. Below are some examples of art created be these artists. (Decamous, 2011).
Enrico Baj
Figure 1. Enrico Baj, Figura Atomica, 1951
Figure 2. Enrico Baj, Manifesto Bum, 1952
Figure 3. Enrico Baj, Two Children in the Nuclear Night, 1956
Salvador Dali
Figure 4. Salvador Dali, Uranium and Figure 5. Salvador Dali, The Three Sphinxes of Bikini, 1947
Atomica Melancholica Idyll, 1945
Surrealism is a form of art that traverses an imaginative existence beyond reality. Inspired by the psychoanalytical theories of Sigmund Freud, surrealists usually use bizarre figures and objects, and dreamlike landscapes. Salvador Dali is a significant figure of the surrealist movement. He often utilized the unconscious mind and symbolism to create his art (Basquin, 1992).
The atomic bomb was a great influence on Dali’s art. He was fearful of the weapon itself but fascinated by the invention. He stated, “The atomic explosion of August 6, 1945, shook me seismically. Thenceforth, the atom was my favorite food for thought. Many of the landscapes painted in this period express the great fear inspired in me by the announcement of that explosion” (Dalí, 1976).
In figure 4. Uranium and Atomica Melancholica Idyll, Dali painted several references to the atomic bomb, and war. In the far right there are elephants with long, bizarre legs dropping excrement, which refers to the dropping of the bomb being a dirty act. It also represented the war of the Romans and the Carthaginians, where elephants were marched into war, showing history repeating itself. There are also explosions, planes dropping bombs, and disfigured human forms representing mutations caused by radiation. Another reference is the baseball players. The little league baseball players represent the name of the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, called Little Boy (Taylor, 2016).
Figure 5. The Three Sphinxes of Bikini by Dali is a painting inspired by the American atomic bomb testing on Bikini atoll, an island located in the Pacific. There were several atomic bombs detonated there, purposefully killing animals, and accidentally irradiating an inhabited island several miles away as well as a Japanese fishing boat, killing one fisherman. The painting shows three figures, with mushroom-like cloud shapes that take the form of human heads. Dali was known for taking objects and shaping them into something similar but different, such as an atomic bomb mushroom cloud and a human head (Taylor, 2016).
Figure 1. (Decamous, 2011)
Figure 2. (Decamous, 2011)
Figure 3. (Introvigne, 2022)
Figure 4. (Introvigne, 2022)
Figure 5. (Shanes, 2012)
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