Before or after, at the same time: Rome, Milan, and Fabio Mauri, 1948–1968

The title draws from Fabio Mauri’s statement: “I can’t stay in step with my time. I am either before or after it, at the same time.” Centering on the life of artist Fabio Mauri and the history of his family—a prominent publishing dynasty deeply connected to radical Italian art, poetry, cinema, philosophy, and literature—this publication offers a fresh lens on the forces that shaped Italian visual culture from the end of World War II through the Years of Lead.

Through a mix of newly commissioned essays, first-person accounts, and translated writings from the era, it explores the intellectual and creative exchanges taking place in Rome and Milan during the 1950s and 1960s. Rather than aiming for a definitive history, the book presents an alternative, anecdotal, and deliberately partial view of a turbulent time—highlighting the vital personal and professional networks that helped define postwar Italian art.